Sanctuary
by SilverRavenStar
Summary: The discovery of Count Dooku, the infamous "gundark pit" incident, the coming of Asajj Ventress, and the fall of the Jedi, the Republic, and Anakin Skywalker. Long, and completed.
1. Silence, Alone

Author's Note

This is my own interpretation of several important events in the _Star Wars _universe, namingly how the Jedi discovered Count Dooku's existence, the infamous "gundark pit" incident hinted at in _Attack of the Clones, _and Anakin's face-off with Asajj Ventress and the progressions of the war. While I have taken several characters and situations from the _Clone Wars _animated series, I do not consider a cartoon to be canon, and have adjusted some events accordingly. This is quite long, but I'm rather proud of it. It's also completed, as I know that I'm terrible at updating.

**PART ONE**

**1 Year Before **_**Attack of the Clones**_

**RAXUS PRIME**

**CHAPTER ONE**

**Silence, Alone**

Searing ion trails exploded and tangled out across space, vaporizing particles and old ship parts adrift. The sublight engines left a superheated exhaust swath, scarring realspace with intertwined, glowing streams that vanished as quickly as they came. Below the single, tiny ship, the planet of Raxus Prime came into view, a yellow-brown orb perched on the outermost band of an old spiral galaxy. Nebulous dust hung in a haze, shimmering as the flash of running lights caught it.

Raxus Prime was not much of a galactic tourist destination. It was secluded in the uncharted space and notorious pirates of the Outer Rim, peppered with rogue asteroids and not a few black holes; the planets that were to be found were often rough and lawless, paying no heed to Republic regulations, largely in the power of petty warlords and corrupt archons. Raxus Prime was likely to be no different.

The pilot of the starfighter had not come to Raxus Prime to be entertained.

Crammed in the angular cockpit of the Delta-6, he bent over a glowing readout screen, flashing in constant transmission from the battered R4-A2 astromech lodged in the left wing. He took them in with a quick sweep of his eyes, then returned his attention to the control panel, reviewing again this mission.

Raxus Prime: outer planet, completely unpopulated on one side and strewn with seedy spaceports on the other, landscape rough with deserts and rock spires. Not rich in natural resources, it had not produced some remarkable Senator or hero or outlaw, and had no main city or dominant species that could be corralled into the Republic – nothing at all. It was ignored by most of the civilized systems, and that made it the perfect place to hide.

The young man piloting the fighter winced and resisted the urge to rub at the tight knot that had currently taken possession of the space between his shoulder blades. Instead, he continued to fly lower, barely looking at the controls, steering the Delta-6 as if it were an extension of his own body. He turned the starfighter into an effortless roll, accompanied by a strident squeal from the astromech, to avoid the ancient sentinels sending out pulses of search energy. They were likely useless scrap, left over from a miner or two who had decided to try his fortune before leaving disgruntled. Still, the young man could take no chances.

Here, from this perspective, he did not seem particularly striking. There was little room in the Delta-6 cockpit, and so his long legs were folded back nearly in half, sheathed in knee-high leather boots banded with iron at the top. His trousers were rough and black, and his tunic was black as well, unremarkable, with a leather vest over it. His utility belt was hung with the standard gadgets – comlink, breather, food bars – and something not so standard.

A thirty-centimeter titanium cylinder, flaring slightly at the bottom, studded with buttons and swathed in a custom handgrip, hooked to his left side with a small wire; the young man touched it occasionally, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. He wore a plain brown cloak, its deep hood concealing his face completely, its hems trapped beneath his numb legs. Beneath it, his face was handsome enough, with short-cropped sandy hair, a strong jaw, straight nose, and sharp blue eyes. A thin braid hung down behind his right ear, tied with a scrap of colored string.

This was no hopeful prospector, deep-space pirate, or lost galactic tourist. This young man was Anakin Skywalker, and he was a Jedi apprentice, eighteen years old, coming to Raxus Prime to search for his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Anakin turned the starfighter into another graceful dive, sliding underneath a hunk of orbiting scrap. Some wrecked cruiser, he thought, as the Delta-6 screamed by almost close enough to kiss the rusting hull. His transmission screen flashed as Arfour bleated a comment, apparently alarmed by the proximity.

**Few sentient species detected on the surface.**

"No, I didn't think so," Anakin said out loud. "Not on this side of the planet. Not unless you want to mingle with the criminals."

With a quick change of course, he banked right and dove around a troublesome current. Superheated air rippled and split around his wings as he plummeted down into the atmosphere. "This is Raxus Prime, remember? The worthless, dangerous planet? Of course they'd send me here."

He wondered if astromechs could detect bitterness in human voices. If so, then he might have overloaded Arfour's sensors. It wasn't because of his Master – it was because he shouldn't have been in this starfighter at all. They should have sent him with Obi-Wan in the first place.

Anakin scowled, guiding the Delta-6 into a smoother trajectory as he quickly checked his front and rear readout screens. Nothing. If a planet _had _nothing, why would it have been so dangerous to let him accompany his Master here in the first place?

* * *

"They can't split us up," he had said to Obi-Wan, as the older Jedi stood with one foot in the cockpit of his own Delta-6. "If this planet is as boring as they say, why is it a threat to have me go?"

"That's the problem, Anakin," Obi-Wan had answered, somewhat testily. "The Council believes that a cell of Separatists has been planted there, and while sending _one _Jedi is quite risky enough, _two, _and one not even a full Knight, might be actively dangerous. They want someone more…experienced."

"They want someone who they don't think is a liability," Anakin had said. He had tried desperately to will the anger from his voice.

"That is not what I meant, Padawan." Obi-Wan had raised his hood, stepped into the Delta-6. "The Council knows your skill in battle, and if I should run into any difficulty, rest assured they will send for you."

"Am I supposed to sit in the Temple playing hologames with six-year-olds?" Anakin said, stung. "Waiting for you to get into trouble? Listening to Master Kolar review saber technique? I'm your apprentice. I should be going with you. They can't split us apart. What do you want me to do, sit and twiddle my thumbs?"

"I want you to be a _Jedi," _said Obi-Wan, a faint undercurrent of reproach in his voice. "And do as you are asked."

Anakin looked down, shamefaced – somehow, even the simplest words from Obi-Wan could make him feel like a child all over again. "Still," he couldn't resist, "Master, while a Jedi has an apprentice, they send the two of them _together – _"

"Not on this mission they don't," said Obi-Wan, kindly but quite firmly. "It is my task to locate these Separatists on Raxus Prime, infiltrate their cell if at all possible, and report my findings back to the Council. It is _your _task to accept this gracefully, and use your time at the Temple wisely, to grow as a Jedi and as a man."

Anakin stared at his feet.

"Don't worry," said Obi-Wan, with a touch of forced cheer. "I don't expect it shall take long. The main bulk of the Separatist army is elsewhere. And remember, they shall send you if needed."

With that, he had punched a button, the transparisteel cockpit slid closed, and Obi-Wan threw the Delta-6 into reverse and lit out backwards with an elegant inverted loop that would, and did, make Anakin jealous. He stood there watching the tiny shape of his Master's starfighter fade into the vivid bands of the Coruscanti sunset, knowing that, as always, the Jedi were right and, however little he liked it, he had to obey.

That was the last time he had spoken to Obi-Wan, over five standard months ago. The Jedi Council had summoned Anakin scarcely a week ago and told him that due to changed circumstances on Raxus Prime, his Master would indeed be requiring the companionship of his Padawan.

Anakin had pressed them for details, but they had revealed nothing. He had asked if Obi-Wan had made contact, and received a guarded allusion that equated to _possibly. _He had asked for news of his Master, but they had given him nothing but promises that he would be leaving for Raxus Prime within the standard week. He would be equipped with Delta-6, hyperdrive ring, Jedi astromech, and identi-card giving his name as Seetu Bagadoor, a humble junk dealer looking for left-over mining scrap. It wasn't as if anyone was likely to ask for it.

It wasn't the first time Anakin had been frustrated by the Jedi Council, and now, as he sent the agile little Delta-6 through a series of maneuvers that would have made a sky-rodeo rider proud, he thought that it wouldn't be the last. They were wise, they were Masters, and they had spent years so enveloped in quiet contemplation of the Force that they quite forgot about the rest of the world. Their physical presences, he decided, had become only a minor inconvenience, the Republic and the thorny political battles only a distraction to tranquility.

Political…._political. _He hated that word. More precisely, the Separatists, Anakin thought angrily as he dodged another chunk of slag. This one looked to have been a turbolaser sometime in its previous life, but now it was just a floating hazard. It always came back to the Separatists.

* * *

About a year ago, a small group of star systems, led by the Trade Federation and the very same Viceroy Gunray who had been defeated on Naboo, had announced their intent to secede from the Republic, claiming the bloated bureaucracy and corrupt legal processes were reason enough, without getting into their myriad of other complaints. The Republic had dealt with rebellions before, usually isolated and short-lived, and they assumed this would be the same.

And that had been their mistake. The Separatists had _not _gone away as planned. In fact, they had gained in strength, power, influence, and fiduciary support, and they had rallied more systems to their cause. Instead of disposing a minor threat, the Republic suddenly found itself facing its most serious challenger in centuries. Since the Separatists were, after all, outlaws, they ran and hid, varying their bases, planning strikes on important Republic targets, waylaying ships, and stockpiling what was, by all accounts, an impressive array of weaponry.

And so, at last, the overwhelmed Senate had begged the Jedi for help. The cosmic do-gooders, as Anakin would only dare call them in the privacy of his own thoughts, had agreed readily enough.

And now – after a long and sleepless trip, he'd tumbled back into realspace just above the thoroughly unimpressive ball of dust that was Raxus Prime. Far away, on the opposite side, there were a few faint, far-apart lights of colonies.

He could just make out the contours of the land. A jagged rock spire punched the air like a victorious fist some six thousand meters down, flashing onto his scopes as an outline in violent green. A few weathered mountains jutted out around it, and the sand was everywhere, coarse and alkaline, fouling his readout screens.

Anakin wrinkled his nose. He'd had more than enough during his childhood on Tatooine; trust the Council to pick him a place that so closely resembled it. He cut the power to the engines a few hundred meters above the ground and let the Delta-6 slide into a graceful landing that kicked up a giant, frothy spume of sand.

The starfighter whirled once and settled to a stop. Anakin punched in the landing claws, and felt the faint judder as they sank beneath the surface. Then he disengaged the cockpit, and a hydraulic hiss feathered out as the transparisteel lifted.

At once, the wind hit him. Wincing, Anakin drew his hood deeper over his face and vaulted off the starfighter onto the ground, bending his knees as he landed. Everyone had mentioned Raxus Prime's general dullness, but no one had mentioned the wind. It cut through him like a lightsaber.

Anakin screwed up his eyes. All around him, the horizon diffracted and split off, like a vast prism. Parked in the lee of a towering rock, his starfighter was the only thing man-made for hundreds of kilometers. It seemed impossible that the Separatists could have come here, impossible that _anyone _could be here.

Cautiously, Anakin reached for the Force. It flowed around him at once, a glittering, comforting cascade, absorbing him in its familiar channels. He searched through it for any trace of his Master. He had to be here somewhere.

There was no sign of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he could feel.

Frowning, displeased, Anakin let the Force go, and leaned back against the plane of the starfighter's wing to consider. The next logical step was to inform the Council that he had reached Raxus Prime, so he turned around, extracted the mess of communications wiring, and set up the small transmitter. A second or two later, a small blue hologram of Mace Windu crackled into view, arms crossed over a simple Jedi robe. "Anakin. You've reached Raxus Prime?"

"Yes, Master," said Anakin.

"Have you made contact with Obi-Wan?"

"No, Master."

"Have you seen any sign of the Separatists?"

"No, Master."

The smooth dark skin above Mace's brow creased ever so slightly. "Very well. You are the Jedi with the closest connection to Obi-Wan, even if you are only a Padawan. That is why we sent you. Report back when you've spoken to him."

_Of course I'm the Jedi closest to Obi-Wan, _Anakin wanted to shout. _He's been my Master for eight years, we've only been inseparable, you should have sent me in the first place. _What he said was, "Of course, Master Windu. May the Force be with you."

"And with you, young Skywalker. Be cautious. There is more to Raxus Prime than it appears, I think." With that, the transmission crackled out into blue static.

Anakin stared at it a second, then sighed and switched the holopad off. He couldn't resist a brief, nervous check around, as if expecting a sentry to leap out at him from behind one of the gnarled rocks. Still nothing.

Anakin began a scanning prowl around the starfighter, checking for animal or speeder tracks, stretching out through the Force. The Council had been sure that the Separatists had come here. Not as if they were infallible, but...

Anakin gritted his teeth. _I'm a Jedi, _he reminded himself, _and Jedi don't get frustrated if the solution doesn't appear within five minutes of planetfall. Obi-Wan has to be here somewhere… he would have reported back to the Council if he'd left. He gets that way. Obsessed with rules._

After several hours of broadening sweeps across the sand, Anakin still had turned up nothing, and discouragement was creeping in over his resolve. _This is a whole planet, after all. Maybe he's somewhere else._

Night was coming. The thick dust caught the rays of sunset and filtered them weirdly, casting twisted shadows over the young Jedi's face. The sky itself was a deep, unhealthy yellow that first deepened to maroon, and then to darkness.

By then, Anakin was back in the Delta-6, flying low with his running lights dimmed, using only his senses to scout out possible obstacles. He steered with superhuman reflexes, scraping away from rock spires instants before he would have crashed. The Force prodded his hands, guiding him true through the dizzying labyrinth. Raxus Prime was nothing if not confusing.

The planet's twin moons emerged overhead, vast sickly crescents hanging so close that it seemed they must fall. They did produce enough light to see by, dyeing shadows onyx-black and the sand and stone very white.

Anakin flew through the night, using Jedi techniques to rest the mind and keep physical weariness away. Near dawn, which heralded itself as a deepening vermilion flush far away between the mountains, he set the Delta-6 down and opened one of the small packs of food at his waist.

The sun rose as he munched. The sun of Raxus Prime, like its moons, was huge and perilously close, but its light was thickened and distorted by all the dust and rubbish in the atmosphere, not to mention the endless sand. Anakin could see the pale silhouette of the Delta on the ground, but the sun did not give nearly as much heat or light as he might have expected for a star its size. Maybe that explained why, despite its desert, this place was so bloody cold.

Here, as always, Anakin began to scan, grimacing as a wind-borne gust of sand scoured him broadside. He pulled up his voluminous hood and tried to hold it there, but searching required both hands, and it flapped like a cumbersome sail. Disgusted, Anakin stuffed it back in the starfighter and resumed his search, robeless.

There was still nothing, at least physically, but here, there was something different – a definite disturbance in the Force. The invisible miasma about him had altered subtly, the crystalline flow of energy somehow changed. He was closer than he had been, at any rate. It was hard walking directly into the wind, so he tried it at an angle, knowing that he looked ludicrous but comforted to know that there was nobody watching. He had already sent out pulses of Force energy several times, and he had felt only trackless wastes.

The Force here was attenuated, weaker than he would have liked, with so little life to feed it. He had to draw more of it that he was used to, and it was harder to do simple things such as searching and tracking. All in all, Anakin had already decided that all the reports on Raxus Prime were accurate. He had barely been here a standard day, and he hated the place.

His feet were sliding around inside his sand-clogged boots. _Blast, won't the wind ever stop? _Anakin shaded his eyes and peered around. Maybe it was a trap… maybe there were droids here, and they, inorganic metallic life-forms, didn't register in the Force as well.

Anakin unhooked his electrobinoculars and lifted them to his eyes. Seen through ultraviolet, radar, and infrared filters, everything in the distance magnified to sudden astonishing size, the desert seemed strange, alien, almost sentient.

He clicked through the filters, sweeping back and forth, but still saw nothing. If the Separatists were here, they were being very cautious indeed. _Or maybe they already have their catch. A Jedi Master is a prize compared to a Padawan. _

Anakin swallowed. He knew he was most likely being ridiculous. It meant absolutely nothing that he had failed to track down Obi-Wan in the first day. _He would say I'm trying for too much._

Being separated from his Master made Anakin edgy. He had never been on a mission by himself before, and this technically didn't count. Still, he was used to relying on his Master, on his dry humor and wit just as much as his Force perception and lightsaber skills. Obi-Wan was the only living Jedi to have ever fought a Sith Lord, not to mention the first Jedi in over two thousand years to do so and win.

This was something that Anakin took secret pride in, but he and Obi-Wan never spoke of it. Obi-Wan had won the duel with the Zabrak Sith, but his own Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, had been killed. It was Qui-Gon who had taken Anakin from Tatooine, insisted to the Jedi Council that he must be trained, even threatened to flout the regulations in order to do it. But the Sith on Naboo had ended that with one thrust of a double-ended lightsaber, and Obi-Wan, keeping his pledge to his dying Master, had taken Anakin for apprentice instead.

Some days, Anakin wished that Qui-Gon had lived. He wondered if perhaps he would have understood him better. Qui-Gon had never been afraid to bend the rules if they did not suit him, to defy the Council and forge a path of his own choosing. Obi-Wan was a good Master, skilled in seemingly everything, well respected by seemingly everyone, but so bloody attendant to protocol, he should have been a droid. Anakin loved him dearly, but the traditional teacher often drove the independent pupil wild.

Arfour's faint bleeping, carried on the wind, broke Anakin from his reverie, and he lowered the electrobinoculars and turned to trudge back to the ship. Despite whatever the Council and Obi-Wan himself had said about this being a straightforward mission, relatively simple, only to ensure that any possible Separatist cell on Raxus Prime had not taken root, Anakin was not so sure. Something was wrong. There was a definite disturbance in the Force.

He reached the Delta, and swung one leg wearily over the wing. He could meditate for years, drive weariness and pain from his mind with technique after technique. Yet, he had not slept in over five standard days and he was feeling it.

Anakin cracked his knuckles, sheathed in black leather gauntlets. Then he sighed, tumbled in a rather undignified fashion into the open cockpit, and checked Arfour's message, still glowing patiently on the screen.

there's nobody here. Are we sure this is the right place?

"Yes, Arfour," said Anakin. "Unless Obi-Wan thought it would be funny to play a prank on the Council, and he's the last Jedi I imagine doing that. Maybe they wanted to cart me off, and this is a false mission to test my patience. Who knows, maybe they came up with that tactic just for me." He reached over to slap the astromech on its dome. "It's all right. Obi-Wan has to be around here somewhere."

**Unless the Separatists have taken him off-planet.**

"I've _thought _of that," said Anakin. In truth, he hadn't, but he was annoyed that his droid was suggesting something painfully obvious that he should have considered long before. "Still, though, I think I would know."

**Can you feel him?** For a droid, Arfour displayed a remarkable knowledge of the Force. Then again, he had served the Jedi ever since he was built.

"No, that's why I'm worried." Anakin was startled to hear himself admit it; he had barely even thought it before it came out of his mouth. "Maybe they've got him and they can't be bothered with me."

Arfour whistled reassuringly. **You will find him. At least it's been easy.**

"Thanks for that," said Anakin, grinning wryly. In truth, he had expected his arrival on Raxus Prime to be far more – well, dramatic. In his imagination, horde of rebels had flown out, relentlessly beribboned the heavens with white-hot streamers of turbolasers, while he, the brave pilot, had ducked them, returned fire, used all sorts of tricky maneuvers to fend them off.

Once he fought his way through the atmosphere, he would be met by an army of Separatists and battle droids, which would necessitate a quick, decisive fight and, of course, victory. After this, he would stroll into their hidden bunker, find his Master, and return to Coruscant in triumph, a hero. The Jedi Council would certainly decide it was time to raise him to Knighthood, never mind that it was unheard-of to leave the rank of Padawan before you left your teens.

A few halfhearted sweeps of an empty, barren dustball wasn't likely to earn him much, Anakin knew, and it irritated him. He stared at the horizon, eyes stinging from the dust, trying to dig through this new, weakened Force as well as he could. He was expected to keep searching, keep stealthy, keep alert.

There was so much expected of him, the latest-coming novitiate to ever join the Order at the ripe old age of nine. The Council, of course, had opposed his training, and it was only Obi-Wan's affection and loyalty to his own Master that had precipitated it.

Anakin stuffed his black-gloved fist into his mouth to muffle a yawn that threatened to split his face in half. Master Yoda had once said that all a Jedi needed was to rest in the Force, to feel the energy, the life, flowing through him and around him, making him into a grateful tool – or something to that effect.

That, too, galled Anakin. _Perhaps all a true Jedi needs is the Force… but I am a man too, and men need sleep._

Still, for Yoda's sake, and for his Master, who would certainly have suggested it, he tried. The Force was no comfort, though – fragile and distorted, spread too thin across this vast arctic desert. Anakin tried to gather it up, weave it into the shimmering patterns he knew so well, to let it soothe him, but he achieved nothing.

The world around him was blurring, and another yawn nearly dislocated his jaw. Anakin, mumbling, ordered Arfour to keep a watch and to wake him immediately if anything changed. Then he tilted the pilot's chair flat and collapsed onto it, pulling his robe up over his head. He was asleep almost before he could close the transparisteel cockpit.


	2. Jedi Duty

_He knew nothing, or close enough._ _Light and dark, hot and cold, requiring no intelligence but simple perception. Sometimes he would wake halfway, and hot bright light would scald his eyes, a clamor of alien language his ears. He hung onto these quicksilver flashes of consciousness as long as he could, but then they would invariably slip away._

_He reached for his old ally, the Force. It was there, as it always was. Gratefully, desperately, he had opened his body to it, let it flow into him, rushing through him, scrubbing him clean… he savored those moments when there was nothing between it and him, a master and a servant. This was the only thing a Jedi was permitted to love._

_Sometimes he could not find it. It was all he could do to will away panic then, using other means of calming the mind. Other times the pain was too great. He remembered little of these days, save for the great bright beacon of the Force. He drowned in the darkness._

_Until the darkness spat him up._

Obi-Wan Kenobi opened his eyes.

It took several minutes for his brain to register that they were open, and, if so, what this meant. The neurons were hopelessly jumbled, any chance of forming a coherent thought nonexistent. Still, he strained and fought against the paralyzing haze, until, at last, victorious, he forced one.

This thought was, _Ouch._

Any other time this might have struck Obi-Wan as mildly humorous, but his head hurt too much for the irony to pound its way through. He reached out, pawing the surface that he lay on, touching his face, trying to decide if he was, in fact, all in one piece. After further inspection, he ascertained that he was, and decided to chance sitting up. This, however, was a bad idea. Rivulets of searing pain flashed through him, driving a gasp from between clenched teeth, and Obi-Wan toppled back.

As if from very far away, he recalled one of Qui-Gon's old lessons. _A Jedi's ally is the Force, and if you give yourself to it, serve it, it will serve you in turn. A Jedi feels no pain if he allows the Force to move through him, to heal him, to do as it wishes. The very energy of life will ease your pain, young Obi-Wan. _How old had he been? Thirteen? Burned in a lightsaber training session, running for comfort… he had been very young indeed. That had been almost twenty years ago, and Qui-Gon was nine years dead. Still, it had to be worth something.

Carefully, Obi-Wan reached out for the Force, and was startled to find how thin it was, almost ethereal, breakable. This was not good. He had always depended so fully on its strength, could not define himself without its constant presence. He kept no secrets from it, held nothing back or apart.

It was better than nothing. Obi-Wan lay with his eyes closed, letting the Force patch what few cracks it could. When the pain in his head, which felt like a whole crew of battle droids blasting away, finally eased an iota, he opened his eyes again and sat up.

He blinked and looked around. He was sequestered in a low, dingy white room, with no doors or windows and only a buzzing glowtube for light. The thing he lay on was a narrow pallet, draped in sackcloth sheets. His white Jedi tunic was filthy, and his lightsaber was, unsurprisingly, gone.

_I am a prisoner? _Obi-Wan could never forgive himself this lapse. _Wait a minute! I'm smarter than this! Who _couldn't _outwit those ridiculous droids?_

The last thing he remembered was the meeting. Obi-Wan had a hazy recollection of meeting someone, of talking, of exchanging promises crafted with as much falsity as his training would allow. And then – bright light, scorching his retinas, an explosion, and then – a long, still achingly familiar silence.

Obi-Wan screwed up his face. He couldn't remember if the person he had met had been a Separatist or not, or if he had simply never found out. Still, someone on Raxus Prime – yes, that was the name of the planet, if he was there – had apparently taken exception to his handiwork.

Figuring out so much in one burst made Obi-Wan's head ache all over again. He took a deep breath, letting himself tumble into the shallow pool that was the Force, instead of the usual bottomless well. _A Jedi needs nothing but the Force, in life, in healing, in soul. _Qui-Gon again.

After several torturous minutes, the pain receded again. Eyes watering, Obi-Wan sat up and mopped his face on his sleeve. He smelled a fright, he noted detachedly, as it must have been ages since he had been anywhere in the vicinity of a bath.

It was several more minutes before he trusted himself to his legs. Then it was only to make a few lurching rounds around the small circumference of his cell before falling heavily back on the pallet, gasping. Wherever he was, he had been here a long time.

When he had recovered some breath, Obi-Wan examined himself, wondering how much of his simple physical ability had gone to seed. From the looks of him, most of it. His ribs were clearly visible beneath his torn tunic, and even the effort of walking had left him exhausted. His hair had grown well past his shoulders, and his beard was untamed, a great scraggly mess framing a thin-lipped, white mouth.

Obi-Wan sighed, with feeling. Then he stood up and called, "Hello?"

His voice was cracked and thin, and his throat was burning with thirst. He had no idea who he thought would hear him, until a light on the far side began to blink. A stilted droid voice echoed back at him, "Hello?"

Obi-Wan swallowed to wet his throat. "Yes. This is the prisoner in – " he checked the engraved numbers above his head – "cell 55, block 5. I would like to know where I am, please." It sounded ridiculous, but this was a droid, not a human, and therefore not capable of much independent thought.

"Cell 55, block 5?" the droid repeated.

_Bloody useless robots, _Obi-Wan swore in his head, before drawing in a breath and letting his anger out with it. "Yes, that's correct."

"Jedi prisoner. Under orders not to divulge information. You shall receive a visitor later. Thank you." The transmission clicked off, and Obi-Wan was left to stare at a blank wall, waiting for someone – he assumed – but with absolutely no idea what, or who, that might be.

* * *

A thousand light-years away, across stars and supernovas, nebulae and galaxies, spanning not a few Republic flagship systems and equal amounts of Separatist rebels, on a planet as different from Raxus Prime as a bantha from a sand-grub, a Jedi Master sat in a soaring durasteel tower, deep in silent meditation.

This Jedi Master was, at first glance, anything but impressive. He dressed in worn brown homespun and used a twisted gimer stick to help him walk – he was, after all, close to nine hundred years old. He stood barely half a meter in height, with triangular ears and wise, lamp-like eyes, wrinkled green skin and coarse white hair.

This Jedi Master was a legend even among those who knew nothing else of the Jedi. His name was Yoda, and he was the senior member of the Jedi Council not only for his great age, but for his deep knowledge and wisdom, his ceaseless study of the Force. There was no one more renowned then Yoda in all the history of the Order.

Yoda opened his eyes slowly and stared across at the other Jedi Master in the room, more than eight hundred years his junior. This Jedi was tall, brown-skinned, bald-headed, also dressed simply, with wide dark eyes that could pierce into your soul and lay your secrets bare. His name was Mace Windu, and when he had been named to the Council at the age of twenty-four, he had been the youngest Jedi to ever receive that honor. He was past thirty by now, closer to forty, but he remained cat-quick and deadly. No one who had ever unwisely challenged Master Windu lived to tell of it.

For a long moment, the two Jedi regarded each other grimly; the results of their meditation were not what they might have wished. "Worrisome, this is," Yoda said at last. "Feel Obi-Wan, I cannot. The Force, stretched and distant has it become. Or harder for us to reach."

Mace regarded the wizened, ancient alien for several silent seconds. "It is not new," he said, after a long silence. "But still worrisome. We can barely feel a close associate, a man we have known for years! By all rights, we should."

"_By all rights," _Yoda agreed, emphasizing the point by jabbing at Mace with his gimer stick. "Never has space been a barrier to the Force – spreads across the galaxy, it does. Transcends all gateways and boundaries and measurements, it does. But Obi-Wan, we cannot sense. And if he has tried to call us, heard it we have not."

Mace sighed. "The Jedi are diminishing," he said, and there was a hint of infinite sadness in his voice. "I wonder if it was wise, sending young Skywalker simply because we promised him."

"If we did not, more trouble would it make," said Yoda sagely. He folded three-fingered, clawed hands in his lap, fixing Mace with an intent stare. "Reckless, the boy is, and stubborn, but capable is he. Obi-Wan, taught him much he has."

"Yes, but – " In a rare display of anger, Mace made a fist, crushed it into his palm. "Obi-Wan is one of our strongest, most cunning, cleverest. We cannot afford to lose him, _especially _over a matter so trivial as we first thought this Raxus Prime affair. We thought it a brief mission for a standard week, nothing else. A confirmation or denial. He was supposed to have returned to the Temple months ago."

"When it comes to these Separatists, simple things rarely are," Yoda warned. "Foolish are we, to underestimate them."

Mace's hands spasmodically opened and clenched. After a long pause, he spoke again. "Something's out of place, Master Yoda. They're too clever. They know too much of Jedi affairs – I never knew droids to take lightsabers from prisoners until the Separatists started it. There is another piece of this puzzle that we have not yet seen."

"Right you are, Master Windu," Yoda agreed. "When next Skywalker makes contact, warn him we must. Tell him to search for his Master diligently, we do not need to. Do this, the boy will. But warn him. Too simple, this seems. Think you that more Jedi are needed?"

"I do not know," Mace admitted, sounding as close to helpless as this skilled warrior and keen-minded man could ever be. "I will ask Skywalker of the situation. If it sounds…. well, if I suspect, then I will have a battalion of our finest warriors sent along at once. Unduli and Offee, Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin if we can spare him… I am not willing to lose Obi-Wan. It could be that Skywalker on the planet can touch him in the Force when we cannot."

"Do that, is all we can," Yoda agreed, and silence fell once more. Outside, the shadows lengthened and split, tracking over a thousand skyscrapers, casting millions of windows into darkness, looming pyramids that fell over Coruscant's endless cityscape. Yoda and Mace sat, both deep in meditation, acknowledging but trying not to think of what might happen if they were both wrong. Terribly, deadly wrong.

* * *

Obi-Wan, as promised, did have a visitor. He had been sitting on his pallet, staring into space and cloaking himself in the Force, when the comm panel across the way blared a static warning, followed by the generic droid's voice. "Jedi. Visitor."

Obi-Wan jumped up and looked around, wondering where this visitor proposed to come from – through the ceiling? Through his bed? The thought disquieted him, and he edged back from it, more aware than ever that he smelled like an unwashed ronto and looked like a Coruscanti madman. Perhaps he could play the part for them, make them think him less of a threat.

Across the way, a hairline crack detached itself from the wall, pulling back with startling speed. Obi-Wan saw a tall, dark-cloaked figure ensconced in a turbolift, then the man stepped out, the door hummed shut, and within the span of five seconds, Obi-Wan was no longer alone. Without speaking, the visitor offered a curt nod, and raised a graceful hand to beckon him back to the bed. Obi-Wan, choosing to cooperate until he knew more, nodded and skimmed obediently backwards.

"Greetings, my friend," said the man, in a deep, elegantly cultured, somehow familiar voice. "You are the last man I expected to see out this far."

Obi-Wan frowned, unsure how to react. Perhaps it was some ploy to make him show his hand, confirm his identity. He settled for a slightly idiotic grin and a rolling slur on his crisp, upper-crust Coruscanti-accented voice. "Sure, yer grace."

The man shrugged. "If you wish to wallow in these childish fancies, far be it from me to dissuade you. However, I did not come here to play games. I wished to understand what business a Jedi Knight, of some renown, has on Raxus Prime."

"A – a Jedi, yer grace?" said Obi-Wan, not yet daring to drop the imbecilic act. "I think ye've mistook me, sir. A Jedi, no – "

"Please, Master Kenobi. I grow tired of this." The man waved a hand, and Obi-Wan felt a sudden, familiar jolt of power, enough to startle him badly – and, more importantly, visibly. The Force. This man could use the Force. And yet…that was impossible, only Jedi could…right?

Unbidden, his thoughts returned to the Zabrak he had killed on Naboo, and the discussion he had had with Mace Windu later. _But which was destroyed – the master or the apprentice? _the older Jedi had asked. Was it possible that the surviving Sith had returned? Obi-Wan tensed.

"I see that you felt that," said the man, a hint of amusement in his voice. He spoke as if well accustomed to being obeyed. "Now, please. I am a patient man, to a degree."

Obi-Wan let out a long sigh and let the persona slip. "I am indeed a Jedi," he allowed, voice climbing several notches to return to its usual cut-glass vowels, precise inflection. "And if you know that much of my Order, you must know that my business here is my own."

The man laughed aloud. "Such honesty is refreshing. But you are my prisoner, hidden in a steel bunker that is crawling with my troops. Dishonesty will not long serve."

"Your troops. Battle droids, no doubt."

Obi-Wan thought the man blinked. The faint light touched a jaw shaded by silver stubble, an expressive mouth, but all else was hidden by the hood. "Why, yes. Five thousand, to be precise, along with my associates and their personal guards. Along with several thousand droidekas and one thousand _Gamma-_class destroyers."

Obi-Wan heard the threat, heard the numbers of foes, and felt his heart sink. _He could be bluffing, but I have no way of knowing, _he concluded dismally. "That's very impressive," he said easily. "I might ask you what you want with me?"

The broad shoulders, veiled in glittering armorweave, shrugged. "You are a Jedi Knight, and far off course. That by itself is reason enough. Tell me, how is Yoda these days?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on, "Alive still?"

"Master Yoda is in good health," Obi-Wan answered carefully, on his mental toes. Whether this was a Separatist general or a disgruntled merchant prince from an outlying system, he knew, he _knew about _and could use the Force…he was a foe to be handled with caution.

"We will speak again, Master Kenobi," the man promised. As he turned to leave, his cloak swung away, and Obi-Wan caught a glimpse of what was unmistakably a curved lightsaber hilt at his side, or at least a perfect facsimile, crafted by someone with far more than a passing interest in the Jedi Order.

If it was meant to throw him off, it did. Obi-Wan stared at it. Perhaps Raxus Prime was not a Separatist holdout after all, or… a terrible but unavoidable thought….they were _allied _with the Sith.

Long after the man had gone, Obi-Wan sat staring at his hands, desperately clothing himself in the Force. No wonder it was so thin, if he was trapped on a barren desert of a planet, surrounded by thousands of droids. He wondered how well he could manipulate objects – such as a delicate mechanism for opening the turbolift – and how far he would get, weaponless, before being cut down in a flurry of blaster bolts.

There was something he could try. It was most likely a dead end, but he could leave no avenues unexplored. Obi-Wan slipped over to the communications panel, knelt down, and eased a small multitool from his boot. It wasn't made of metal, was small enough to escape material scans, and only a Jedi could use it, or coax it to a form.

Obi-Wan held it in his mind, conscious of the effort it took to summon and shape the Force. He gently molded the multitool into a slender, pronged wire – good for digging about and rerouting comm channels, for example. If his Force-sensitive captor picked up on this, he was in trouble, but he had to trust that his status as Jedi Knight made him a bit more important than the average prisoner.

Eyes chafed, body complaining with brief, violent spasms of pain, Obi-Wan meticulously dug into the panel, exposing a tangled nest of circuitry. A thousand hair-fine connections held the wires together, and Obi-Wan rocked back on his heels, frustrated, wishing his Padawan was there. Anakin had an almost supernatural gift with machinery, and could have had this entire mess sort itself out, reassemble, hijack the door assembly, and sing a Mon Calamarian opera while it was at it.

_Then again, if Anakin were here, we may not be in this fix at all. _Obi-Wan ran another hand through his hair. His Padawan had many faults, but skill with a lightsaber was not one of them. _He would have taken half of them down, and… _Obi-Wan allowed himself a rueful chuckle. _We'd most likely both be dead._

* * *

Anakin jerked awake, gasping. It took him several seconds to remember where he was – sprawled flat on the seat, tangled up underneath his robe, sand scratching the transparisteel dome above his head. He was on Raxus Prime, the _other _barren sandy planet, not Tatooine – and yet, moments ago, he had been there again. He had visited the planet of his birth in his dreams, which happened disturbingly often these days. After eight or nine years, it had faded into soft-edged phantoms and faraway memories, but a few things stood out sharp and clear – Podracing, the humiliation he had felt when Padmé had mistaken him for a slave, and his mother's face.

It was her he dreamed about. His mother, Shmi. In his dreams, they were together, reunited after so long, and she smiled as he showed her everything he'd learned, how he was no longer Annie the slave, but Anakin the Jedi. She'd been so impressed.

And then it had changed. Some nebulous pendulum had shifted, some switch triggered from _dream _to _nightmare. _Her face had cracked like flawed porcelain, and bloody light had spilled out. Horrified, he had reached for her, but he couldn't touch her, could only grope wildly. She had shattered before his eyes – and then he had woken up, out of breath, distraught, still half-caught in it.

This troubled him. _Jedi don't have nightmares. They keep their concentration in the present, the past means nothing and can prove a distraction. _He had sat in the starfighter in the quiet, haunted hours between darkness and sunrise, carefully focusing his thoughts. _I am a Jedi. I must remember my mission. My identity._

There was a faint tweedle as Arfour made a comment. Sitting up, Anakin rubbed his eyes and reminded himself, yet again, that dreams had no power over a true Jedi. _That is all I have ever wanted to be. _He glanced over at Arfour's message.

**I've scanned and kept watch as you wish. Still nothing. Does Raxus Prime have any native species?**

"Not as far as I know. It's mainly pirates, of whatever breed, that migrate here." Anakin straightened his tunic, which had grown tousled in his disturbed dreaming. "On this side of the planet – one or two desert beasts. Nothing else, though. I'm starting to wonder if we're the only living things here."

A short bleep, a long bleep, and a brief warble. **You mean, if _you_ are the only living thing here.**

"Yes, Arfour, I know you're a droid," said Anakin, half-amused. Out of habit, he reached for the Force – only this time, he felt something there, clearly, and the last shards of sleepiness shattered and vanished.

Anakin popped the cockpit open and sprang out, almost buried in the deep drift of sand that had mounded beneath the starfighter struts as he had slept. He looked this way and that, wary, hand on his lightsaber, ready to draw it in an instant. Something was here, something at last. Anakin chanced a split-second, cautious probe into the Force, trying to seek out a familiar part of it, trying to isolate it by name.

_Obi-Wan?_

No answer. There _was_ something, but if it was his Master, the Force was not strong enough to convey an answer. Anakin resolutely ignored the other possibilities – his Master was too weak, too far gone, or even dead.

He wouldn't even think it. Obi-Wan was alive. And if he wasn't, it was another transgression to lay at the feet of the Jedi Council. _They wouldn't like that. _

Restless, feeling like a caged bantha, Anakin turned this way and that. If he ignited his lightsaber, the blue glow would give away his position as good as a signal flare. If he didn't, he risked being caught off guard, vulnerable to whoever was watching – spying on? – him. Whoever it was, Anakin didn't like them.

After a few more quick seconds of work, he traced the presence to a cliff nearby, pockmarked with old catacombs, high enough that it might have sheltered some of the sand if he'd been foolish enough to land the Delta there. Anakin whirled. "Arfour," he muttered. "Stay with the ship."

Not waiting for the astromech's answering bleep, he turned, gathered his robe out of the cockpit, and shrugged into it. It was cold, and riddled with wind-blown sand, but he pulled the hood down tightly, re-concealed his lightsaber, and began to trudge.

Anakin soon discovered that all the sand had warped his perception. The cliff had seemed only a few hundred meters shy of the Delta, but now that he had struck out for it, it seemed to recede with every step. Anakin growled, then quickly bit back a curse he'd once overheard in the Mos Espa marketplace. _A Jedi does not allow the situation to frustrate him, _he reminded himself. _A Jedi adapts to it. _Obi-Wan's constant lectures on the subject had been burned so indelibly into his brain he could recite them in his sleep.

At last, he reached the cliff. It was taller than he'd thought as well, a weather-beaten, sand-scoured pinnacle of precarious, pockmarked rock, climbing high enough so that it blended with the sky. Tilting his head back, Anakin realized that to scale it, to get nearer to the mysterious presence sensed so fleetingly, he was going to require an ascension gun or a heaping amount of luck. Or better yet, both.

_A Jedi is resourceful. A Jedi uses what he is given. _Anakin dug in the tool pack at his waist and extracted a slender coil of wire with a hooked barb on the end. He rotated his shoulders a few times to loosen the stiff muscles, then tossed the hook upwards.

It managed to find a chink in the grainy sandstone, ten meters above him. Anakin tugged on it experimentally, wondering if it would hold, and if he shouldn't just make the Force haul him up. Obi-Wan would have a heart attack at using the Force to serve him instead of vice versa, but Obi-Wan was the one in the clutches of the Separatists, and he was the one out here, trying to make a wire drag him up a cliff.

"This is ridiculous," Anakin muttered out loud. He shucked his gloves, tucking them in his belt – skin had less of a chance of slipping on rock than leather. His hands would be scoured and numb by the time he got anywhere, but he had no choice.

Anakin pushed himself up off the ground, swinging precariously on the spidery monofilament. The desert dropped away beneath his boots at a positively alarming rate, and as the thread began to swing back, Anakin leapt, aided by his own physical gifts and the glittering lure of the Force, which delineated handholds for him as clearly as if they'd been studded with laser beacons. He latched on, narrowly avoiding an unpleasant meeting between stone and nose.

Breathing hard, he clung to the rock face. Then, one arm wedged deep in a crack, he untangled the wire and tossed it upwards again, conscious even as he did so that time was slipping away. The presence was already fading, and by chasing it, in the position he was in now, he had made himself very vulnerable.

He had only the faintest intuition that something was wrong an instant before it happened. A scorched pause, and then –

A sonic report shocked his ears, so loud he thought a detonation had gone off. That was, until something hot and glowing whizzed by him, very close, leaving a black mark. A blaster. Somebody was shooting at him.

Obi-Wan was going to kill him, if the Council or this creep didn't finish the job first.

Anakin redoubled the pace of his climbing, out of breath and half-panicked. Another blaster bolt screamed by, two inches from his left hand, and that was it. He snatched one-handed for his lightsaber, shot upwards until his feet landed on a relatively wide ledge, and ignited the glowing blade just in time to catch a bolt powerful enough to throw him back painfully into the rock.

Not just a handheld blaster, then; a laser cannon. A deep chill went through Anakin. He _knew _he shouldn't have chased the lure; no doubt the Separatists had placed the living being there to entice him into this trap, and like a Hutt shown the money, he had thoughtlessly obliged. What was that Obi-Wan always said, he was too impulsive, never stopped to consider? Hard to argue with that right now.

Anakin pressed himself flat to the cliff as a searing rain of blaster bolts hailed down, inches from him, so close he could almost taste the heat. Breathing shallowly, he waited until they ceased – whoever was up there taking potshots apparently thought that about two hundred would be sufficient to dispatch a lone man exposed on a cliff, even if that man was a Jedi. At least in training.

The sand was stinging his eyes. It felt as if his face was cracking, his lips chapped and bleeding, his hands losing feeling. Even long after the shots stopped, the sand hissing and vaporizing as it whirled inward to the vortex of his still-ignited lightsaber, Anakin didn't dare to move.


	3. Confederacy of Fools

**CHAPTER THREE**

**Confederacy of Fools**

Count Dooku, fallen Jedi and vice-architect of the Separatist movement, sat at the head of a long, glittering durasteel table in a long, glittering, durasteel room. His fingers were steepled contemplatively beneath his chin, which bristled with an unshaven silver beard. There was still a streak of black in the center of it; for all his eighty years, the Count did not yet think of himself as an old man. That was a prelude to weakness.

He lifted his eyes to his companions. Most of them were battle droids, sentinels with powerful guns and extremely limited capacity. The Neimoidian models were mainly good for parroting commands and raining blasterfire on anything that moved – useful skills, of a sort, and good for guards. They had absolutely no interest in the dual machinations of the Separatists and the Trade Federation, so they would neither listen nor spy nor even remember.

There _were _a few organics present. And with all the prattling he had to endure from them, Dooku half-wished they were droids too. At least that way they would have deactivation switches.

"The Banking Clan grows worried about our long exile here," said San Hill, a tall, fretful alien with a narrow face and an oily manner. "With all due respect, Count, I must advise that we move from hiding, make ourselves known – the glory of the Confederacy must not – "

"No one asked your advice, my friend," said Dooku. When he spoke as _benevolent leader, _which he did now, his deep voice was mild and friendly, almost teasing. He placed his hands on the table – strong, long-fingered, with immaculate milky nails. They were barely wrinkled – a warrior's hands, a lord's hands.

San Hill peered nervously at his compatriot, Rune Haako, the junior viceroy of the Trade Federation. "My friend – my good friend – do you think that – "

Haako looked flustered at being called upon to speak, and shot a wild glance at his senior, Nute Gunray, who offered absolutely no help. When it was clear that another speaker was not forthcoming, Haako whimpered, "My loyalties lie with you, Count, and Lord Sidious, as always – "

"Good." His Master would be furious if he let the slimy Neimoidians slip right through his fingers. Privately, Dooku could not stand the tall, green aliens, with their blinking scarlet eyes, wheedling manner, and ludicrous headdresses. They were also far too smug for having been beaten so soundly on Naboo. But the Trade Federation had endlessly deep pockets, and if there was one thing a burgeoning rebellion needed, it was money.

Haako, clearly relieved, lapsed back into immediate silence, and Dooku looked down the table again, as if daring someone else to speak. When no one did, Dooku continued pleasantly.

"I know that this planet is not to your liking, my friends. But it is necessary that it is our temporary sanctuary…that we…remain hidden for a short while. Do not fear, my Master will soon have the Senate squabbling their time and money away. And then…" Dooku leaned forward, and everyone else leaned forward with him. They were rich and pliable fools, nothing else, but far greater rewards would come if he remembered to suffer them. "We shall return, but this time with _leverage."_

"What leverage, my lord?" burbled the tall, boxy metal thing at the end, roughly man-shaped, with a square green head and tinted ultraviolet goggles. Wat Tambor, the present of the Techno Union, who was constantly adjusting the knobs on his chest to modulate the fluctuating radio waves of his speech.

Dooku smiled. "Surely you've heard, my friend. My old acquaintances, the Jedi Council, took note of our dealings on Raxus Prime and sent a… a scout."

"A scout?" Tambor crashed to his feet in alarm. In the process, he knocked half his knobs awry, and wasted several seconds fiddling with them in a panic. "My lord, my lord, our security might be compromised, I beg leave to deploy my newest, top-flight EG-model droids – "

"Sit down, Tambor, sit down. We are in no danger from him, Jedi Knight though he may be." Dooku smiled again. "I neglected to mention that we have captured him. He is weaponless, helpless. I do understand that he is quite dear to the Council and the Republic." He paused for effect. "Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"And what are we to do with him, Count?" Haako piped up, apparently feeling especially brave.

Dooku treated the Neimoidian to a withering gaze that had him halfway beneath the table, shivering and cringing. "_Think, _Junior Viceroy. With him in our grasp, we would have a certain amount of…well, as I have said, leverage. If the Senate did not agree to legally recognize the Confederacy of Independent Systems, well…what is to prevent Master Kenobi from meeting a sad, untimely end?"

"He's a _Jedi,_" Gunray spoke up at last. "Count, you must recall that this is one of the Jedi they sent to Naboo – he beat us there, he's too dangerous, if you leave him here he will work some trickery – "

Dooku held up a hand to silence the babbling viceroy. "My friend, let me assure you that there is no risk to us, or to _your _personal safety." There was an icy, implied threat in his tone, contrasting his polite words. "Master Kenobi is kept carefully locked up, you may have no doubt on that account. And also…"

He paused, another unspoken threat hanging in the air. "He knows that he is a prisoner of the Separatists, I have no doubt. _However, _he does not know that I am a leader of the movement. I would thank you to _not _have your droids inadvertently inform him. It is better if the Council does not know of my involvement."

This was met with a chorus of murmured, "Yes, Count"-s.

"Excellent." Dooku pushed back his chair and stood. "If we have no further business, this convention of the Confederacy is adjourned."

* * *

Later, in his quarters, Dooku shed his shimmersilk cloak and poured himself a glass of fine Coruscanti wine – one of the few luxuries he allowed himself during his prolonged exile on Raxus Prime. There was little likelihood of anyone intercepting the Separatists here, which was why his Master, Darth Sidious, had chosen it.

It was intended to lull the Republic into a false sense of security, he had explained. Naturally, the Council would catch wind of the plot, send one of their army of myrmidons to investigate, and then – windfall. Dooku had been astonished and delighted to discover that the Jedi they had sent was their precious Obi-Wan Kenobi; he had thought that any Master of middling importance would suit. He had turned over a stone looking for worms, and instead he had found gold.

Dooku sat down and sipped his wine. In a way, there was an opportunity here, even if now was not the right time to cultivate it. Obi-Wan's own oh-so-beloved Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, had once been Dooku's apprentice. No doubt that was where Qui-Gon's lifelong rebellious streak had first been nurtured.

It was literally a murderous irony that Darth Maul, Sidious' previous apprentice, had been the one to kill Qui-Gon….before making a fatal mistake. The Sith had the fight all but won – Qui-Gon had been stabbed through the heart, dying, and Obi-Wan was hanging precariously from a lone knob above a depthless melting pit. All it would have taken to end him was a swift slash with a ruby-red blade.

Then Maul paved the way for his undoing. Instead of finishing it, he gloated.

The young Jedi had kept his calm, drawn upon the Force. He leapt free, summoned his Master's lightsaber to his hand, and with one mighty stroke, cut Maul in half…opening the way for Dooku to become Sidious' student. In a perverse way, Dooku mused, he could almost _thank _Kenobi for that.

And then Qui-Gon had died in his grieving student's arms. Sometimes, Dooku missed him – not the stubborn, independent Jedi Master that he had grown to be, but the powerful, willful Padawan that he had been. Qui-Gon could have helped him. Perhaps Dooku would have been able to convince him to join the Separatists, or at least feed him enough to make him believe no matter the cost… Qui-Gon had never been shy about blithely shattering regulations.

He had also, Dooku recalled, been a passionate advocate of Obi-Wan's skills and abilities. The Master took great pride in the Padawan, whether it was hot-wiring a junked speeder or learning Ataro saber technique. Personally, Dooku had never cared for Ataro; it seemed as if the style was more about silly gymnastics than fighting. Still, Qui-Gon had spoken much of him.

And now his old apprentice was a Master in his own right, training this boy, Anakin Skywalker, on whom everything depended. Obi-Wan was Dooku's captive, his bartering tool, his expendable life. It was one of those mordantly funny coincidences that only the universe could work out. Dooku wondered if he would actually give the command to have Kenobi terminated, if he would trust it to one of the droids, or if he would ignite his lightsaber and finish the Jedi himself.

Then again, it might not be necessary. _Perhaps_ _it is not too late for Obi-Wan to take what should have been his Master's place… in a sense, he's almost my grandson. _At thirty-four years, Obi-Wan was not even half of Dooku's eighty… he was much younger and by all accounts fierce, fair, and extremely talented….if he could be swayed, persuaded, tempted to stray, then his fresh blood might be just the thing the Separatists needed to ramrod their pact of legitimacy through the unyielding Senate.

But what could make the most observant of Jedi slip? Dooku had once been one himself, but he had grown weary of the fetters the Jedi kept on their power, keeping themselves confined to only one avenue through such a vast and unknowable thing as the Force. Darth Sidious had broadened his perceptions immeasurably.

That would never work with Obi-Wan, Dooku knew. His devotion to the Order was too strong; luring him in with a pledge to expose its faults would not hold. There must be some weakness….some way to cut through the layers of crisp manners and fondness for platitudes.

What could slam Kenobi in the face like a blaster bolt? What word would bring to life the anger? When last Dooku had checked, Obi-Wan had been a _man…_rule-abiding past the point of sense, true, but flesh and blood, not stone and ash.

_It could be said that the Jedi are the statues… they decry emotion, only revere tranquility. While my Master and I are different – we allow ourselves to feel, draw power from it, create our own Force through the simple fact of emotion, of being human._

And then Dooku had it.

It was so simple… so childishly, laughably simple, as easy as connecting dots to reveal a picture. There _was _one thing that would reach Obi-Wan, slice through the Jedi courtesy and Jedi discipline, sting him to the marrow of his bones, leave him wounded, raw, vulnerable.

It was so delicious, Dooku was half-tempted to run to the dungeon that instant and propose it to Kenobi, just to watch his reaction. He would have even paid for it – his Master had a knack for rubbing two credits together to create an illusory third, which was then spent without having ever existed. Small wonder the debts were mounting so quickly for the Republic.

As long as his Master was in control of it, no headway would be made in the war against the Separatists; they would be locked in sluggish, bloody impasse forever, a draining, endless war, splitting apart both the foundations of the Republic and Senators who had once been friends, allies.

But not yet. He must wait and see if he had to kill Kenobi first.

* * *

A man stood in a silent, luxurious office. Behind him, a wide picture window opened over the traffic-choked, light-scarred vistas of Coruscant. It was nighttime, but it scarcely seemed to matter – glow permeated through towering skyscrapers. Speeders rushed hither and thither, threading a dangerous tapestry in overcrowded air, honking and dodging, rushing onwards in their life, eager to reach somewhere and go to there from here. Coruscant was a wild, churning machine, spitting gears and sprouting leaks, always in constant, dizzying motion.

In contrast, the man stood very still, partly from the importance of the news he was receiving, partly to make sure the elaborate stealth shields enclosing his office did their work. He was bent over his desk, listening intently to the message being relayed by a fifteen-centimeter-tall blue hologram.

The listener was of average height, and he had once been of average weight as well, but the drain of the past years had taken their toll, withering the flesh on his body. His cheekbones were sharp, his blue eyes almost sunken, the birdlike bones of his hands stark beneath papery pale skin. His hair was snow-white, perfectly coiffed, and he was still dressed in brocaded overcoat and silk trousers despite the late hour. All the glowlamps in the office had been turned off, but the endless city outside drowned it in murky twilight.

"…as always, Master, I obey," said the hologram, electronic distortion filtering through its deep voice. The image was also of an older man, silver hair and beard, dressed in black, wearing tall boots and a dark cloak. "I have the Jedi ready, and I expect to make the proposal within the week. In the interim, perhaps you should warn the Senate that the Separatists are _not _gone, remain dangerous….the usual."

"Yes, Lord Tyranus," said the first man, the real one, watching the small hologram unblinkingly. "Very good… you have done your job well."

He paused. "One more thing. The Jedi Council has dispatched Kenobi's apprentice, young Skywalker, to Raxus Prime. Be as rough with him as you wish, but see that no permanent harm comes to him. The boy still has a confounded affection for his Master, and will slam himself against any and every wall in order to rescue him."

Lord Tyranus understood. "In the case that Kenobi should escape," he put forth into the silence, "I _do _have several….ideas."

"I see. I must decide whether you should let him go or not," the first man answered. "If only there was a way to be rid of Kenobi and promote Skywalker…yes, I shall think on it. Farewell, my apprentice."

"I shall be in contact, my Master." The hologram winked out of existence.

Even after Lord Tyranus had gone, the listener remained bent, braced on his hands, the very picture of an exhausted, overworked old man. There was much to decide, formulate, contrive, scheme. But in the interim, he must sleep.

Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, turned around and permitted a small yawn to slip past his thin lips. He had not slept well lately, but he needed to find a way to refresh himself. It would never do to let the Senators think him weak.

* * *

Across the city, in the five-pronged architectural spire known as the Jedi Temple, in the sanctuary of peace and calm that had not yet felt the dark repercussions, another Force-sensitive man was having trouble sleeping.

Mace Windu did not often let himself rest completely, not even in the haven that was the Temple. He had trained to keep his warrior's instincts sharp – when he slept, it was halfway, a corner of his mind still alert and on edge, ready to stir in an instant. But even he had to, and now was one of the times that he had decided to try, crawling beneath the covers of the plain bed in his simple, small room. However, sleep, perhaps too used to being denied, refused to come.

Mace rolled over, restless, and reached for the Force to soothe himself. There was a part of him that felt guilty for trying to sleep at all when Obi-Wan could be facing some mortal peril on Raxus Prime. His inability to sense his old friend, even from across the civilized galaxy, was deeply troubling.

After yet another failed attempt to still his racing thoughts, Mace stood up and shrugged his Jedi robe over his nightshirt. Hooking his lightsaber to his belt out of habit, he pressed the door release and padded from his room, entering the quiet, shadowy corridors of the silent Temple.

Mace turned down the wide hall that led to the Jedi archives. Here, in this immense, interconnected labyrinth, there was a record of almost every object, person, system, technology, Jedi, or regulation that had ever existed. Its prim and bookish caretaker, Jocasta Nu, went as far to speculate that _everything_ was to be found here, in the high shelves loaded with glowing databanks.

That was not entirely true, Mace thought, troubled. There were, for example, only incomplete and fragmented records on the one thing that should concern the Jedi Order the most – their ancient enemy. The Sith.

At this hour, the Jedi Master was the only one trawling the dizzying web of information. He walked forward, rubbing his dry eyes, wondering what he had come to look for. He could hardly expect to find a precise referral to unrest in the Force during a time of chaotic war, when all the Jedi hopes rested on a puzzling ancient prophecy and the impetuous young man who was supposed to fulfill it.

_Anakin. _Mace sighed again. There had to be some other explanation for this strange shadow that pervaded the Force, skewering perceptions and clouding vision. Twilight coming before nightfall. He had read enough, seen enough, to recognize that the Jedi now had only a pale phantom of the power that they had possessed only fifty years ago. He hoped desperately that he was wrong.

Mace walked deeper. There was one adornment in the archives that many Padawans – and some Masters as well – found strange. Twenty impeccably sculpted bronze heads, representing the entire spectrum of species, from human to Calamarian, Twi'lek to Trandoshan, lined the archives, ten to a side. They watched with silent, knowing eyes, their names written in script on stone pillars.

_The Lost Twenty, _they were called. In the twenty-five thousand years that the Jedi Order had existed, these were the only Knights to have ever left it. Their reasons had been as varied as their faces – for money, for love, from disillusionment, from pain. All had been dear friends, great warriors, counted as a terrible loss. Mace had known none of them save one. It was that bronze head he stopped at.

_Adeus Dooku, Jedi Master. Left the Order in his seventieth year for reasons undisclosed._

Love was not a thing spoken of with the Jedi. They knew that it existed, that it shaped them more often than they wished, but they had been trained from birth not to form attachment, to let go of everything they feared to lose, and allow the Force to shape their destinies as it would, free from outside influences. Yet, nonetheless, from Yoda himself to the youngest Padawan, the compassion that guided their paths took root in their hearts as well. Masters and apprentices in especial formed a fierce, inseparable bond, and Mace Windu knew that no matter how many rules there were to the contrary, no matter how faithfully he had obeyed them since, Obi-Wan Kenobi's heart had shattered the day Qui-Gon Jinn had died.

Mace had known Adeus Dooku, had sparred with him a thousand times in the training chamber. Dooku had been a master of the graceful, archaic lightsaber form Makashi, a style designed to repel other lightsabers rather than blaster bolts, a style dating from a time when the Sith had been the open enemies of the Jedi. But Mace's preferred style was Vaapad, a cutting-edge and dangerous form that he had invented himself – he was its only living practitioner. When first he had become a Jedi Master, before he had learned how to detach himself fully from anger, he had had to channel that inner darkness somehow lest it swallow him. To use Vaapad, one had to enjoy the clash, anticipate the thrill of victory – a path that led, on occasion, perilously close to the dark side. Yet such was Mace's skill in and love for the Force, Vaapad had not swallowed him; to the contrary, he had mastered it. Yoda would not permit its teaching to apprentices, however. It was simply too dangerous.

Yet Dooku had stayed stubbornly loyal to Makashi. _It's almost as if he knew something that the entire Council of Masters did not… was it something he sensed, something he knew? _Mace and Dooku had been close friends, had walked these halls, in the days when the Lost Twenty were only the Lost Nineteen, speaking of the Force and of its Mastery, of Padawans and of Senators. And no matter how much the Jedi Code forbade attachment, that had not made Dooku's defection any easier for Mace to bear.

Sometimes, he wondered where Dooku had gone. What welcome would a former Jedi find, in a world where the words _former _and _Jedi _put together were all but nonexistent? Had he returned to his home planet of Serenno? Mace recalled that he was minor royalty there, the progeny of an ancient, highborn family. Had that been what the Jedi Order had been weighed against – countship, chests of credits, perhaps even a duchess to wed? Dooku had been a Jedi heart and soul for all the seventy years of his life until then. What had been strong enough to lure him away?

And where had this shadow in the Force come from? Was there something directly in front of him that he should see? After a thousand years, were the Sith awakening again – or had they been awake all this time, and this cloud had hidden them?

And which Sith had Obi-Wan killed, nine years ago? Did it make a difference? Had the master found a new apprentice, or had the apprentice become the new master?

Mace sat heavily on a bench, eyes dry, mind agitated. This dangerous riddle – the Separatist insurgency, the weakening of the Republic, the Chancellor's increasing power over the squabbling Senate, Dooku's defection, Anakin's great promise and great danger – there was an answer. There was a solution for every problem, a piece to fit with every other, and very often, Mace had been the one called to find them.

And now, facing the greatest challenge of his life, the gravest threat to the Republic and the Jedi Order, and the deepest uncertainty in over a hundred years, Mace Windu needed someone else to unearth the answers for him.

Before it was too late. Before this growing shadow swallowed them all.


	4. Escape Plans

**CHAPTER FOUR**

**Escape Plans**

Obi-Wan knew that growing bored was the last thing he should be doing. He was a prisoner, undoubtedly under very strict guard, surrounded by a mob of overenthusiastic battle droids. He had to keep his senses honed, search for a weakness, and find a way to extricate himself from his predicament.

And yet, one thing he had never known was the reality of being a largely ignored prisoner. It would be far worse if they cared enough to torture him, of course; there were some vile things that could crack Jedi composure. At first, he had thought that this was what they had meant for him, and had spent hours in trancelike meditation, organizing his thoughts and preparing himself for the reality of pain and death.

A Jedi accepted the world as it was, but not always passively. If there was a way to change it, if the Force revealed a way to fight, then they would, fiercely and to the death. The Jedi were bound in body and mind, spirit and soul, to their path, to causes they believed just, and to the overthrow of darkness and terror in the galaxy. Still, they never took the initiative. They always listened for the guidance of the Force, fighting their battles as they were brought to them.

And yet, time had passed, in small trickles and large chunks, and no droid had come to haul him away, nothing terrible had happened, he had not had any significant amount of flesh carved off – or anything at all, for that matter. In a way, it frightened him. He was sure that they were luring him off his guard, down into a black hole of complacency. The Separatists excelled at that.

The dark cloud that he had felt in passing on Coruscant was very strong here. Every time Obi-Wan reached for the Force, there it was, a shroudlike funereal blackness. Nonetheless, he made himself practice his skills, tossing a small rusted knob in the air and keeping it spinning for hours, writing arcs and elaborate loops, oscillating like a tiny planet, as he watched it, nudging it with whisper-thin threads of the Force. In doing, he kept his abilities as fresh as possible.

Obi-Wan had no idea how many days passed like this – he lost track, all the while developing a more and more alarming resemblance to a feral raider from the Coruscanti underworld. But at last, when he had decided that nothing was going to happen unless he took the initiative, he did exactly that.

* * *

Anakin shifted his weight at last, an involuntary gasp hissing through his teeth as blood rushed back into his legs. The dead flesh tingled painfully, and there was a fierce knot in his shoulders. He made himself reach up, deactivate his lightsaber, and watched detachedly as the glowing blue blade slithered out of existence.

Then he took stock of his situation. Trapped two hundred meters in the air above a darkening and desolate desert, with an unknown foe above, armed with a powerful blaster cannon and a worrisome knowledge of how to best lure him into a trap. Most possibly a Separatist. Fair possibility that this Separatist held his Master captive.

There was no question of what to do. Anakin shoved his lightsaber through his belt, wound up the cord, and started to climb; his muscles were shaking with exhaustion by the time he'd put another hundred meters between himself and the ground. The bloated sun had sunk into a prismatic effluvium of cloud; he had only a few standard hours left before darkness.

Anakin had no fear of falling. The Force would support him if his hands and feet came away from the cliff, and if it didn't, he would make it. He was afraid of the bone-crushing weariness, the terrible ache in his limbs, the unseen enemy. His respite came only because that enemy currently believed him dead. Anakin had no wish to disabuse them of that notion – yet.

When he had climbed high enough that the Delta and Arfour were invisible below, and the sun was a slender crescent wavering before the onrushing night, Anakin stopped on a broad ledge and winced as all his muscles began to scream at once. His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely make them fumble in his utility belt.

Anakin felt a bit better, although no stronger, after tossing down four energy bars and several gulps of water. He stood up, stretching his arms and shoulders.

There was a solid handhold several inches out of reach and to his right. Anakin strained, digging his boots into the hairline cracks fracturing the sandstone. He pushed himself up and caught it, but barely, swinging precariously above what felt like several kilometers of empty sky.

His weakness made him angry. He knew he had been pushing himself to the very limits of his physical ability, running on energy bars and the occasional mind-resting technique, but he thought – no, he _knew – _that he was better than this, stronger than this. He had not exerted himself enough to be gasping like a Quarren out of water right now, and if he had… well, that displeased him. Greatly.

Anakin made a blind stab for another handhold, and when he missed it, he growled aloud. His rage made him stronger, and he surged up the cliff like a breaking wave, his fingers slapping onto and dragging him from knob to crack, crack to knob, his legs churning like a droid's servomotors, as the world fell away beneath him. He was alone on the cliff, the planet, the universe.

The stars came out, shining oddly through the hazy atmosphere. They were not there, he did not see them. Leg bunched, muscles tensed, exploding upwards, and he would hang from one finger until the others came to join it. Weariness made no matter, in fact it did not exist. The sole thing driving him up the cliff was the thought of how furious he would be if he stopped.

It was deep night by the time Anakin's frenzy finally gave out – fortunately for him, it gave out just in front of a crack that was broad enough to rest on. Crawling into the makeshift shelter, shaking and splintered, Anakin realized what he had just done. The force had been flogging him, rather than the Force guiding him.

It scared him mindless. _There was power there. So much power, forbidden power…I am a _Jedi, Anakin reminded himself for the five thousandth time, panicky and insistent. _Using anger as a source of power is a direct path to the dark side._

He drew in a deep breath, a second, let go of the rage that had empowered him, given him enough strength to climb. _I am doing it for Obi-Wan, _he rationalized to himself. _Not for me – I am doing it to save my Master. Even so, it won't happen again._

When he woke a few short hours later, and pressed himself up and onto the cliff once more, he found that he could not climb nearly as well without it. _I will not give in. _Anakin reminded himself. He carefully dulled his fury, remembering that to be angry at the cliff was completely useless. _It's stone, it can't do anything. _

It was harder and harder to keep himself sharp. Climb, lunge… bare hands slipped on rough rock. A thousand tiny streaks of blood on his palm…_I am a Jedi…._

Push upwards, legs straining, the sharp light of the sun hurting his eyes… the blood on his hands made him slip, for a terrifying second he was looking _straight down _at the ground…. _Jedi do not use anger, they act when the mind is clear…._

Hauling himself upright, spread-eagled on the rock, not sure if he could go on… wondering if the Force would catch him if he fell all the way down…wondering if there would be another round of blasterfire_….unclouded by emotion…_

Anakin pressed his face against the scratchy stone and let out two deep, shuddering breaths. He had trained and conditioned endlessly in the Temple, sparring Obi-Wan and other Padawans, running and climbing and performing acrobatics. This utter exhaustion was something completely new, and very frightening. He did not like this idea of a limit that he could not go beyond.

..._only tranquility…with peace…_

Anakin's abused fingers very nearly parted company with his tiny handhold, and a frosty shock of adrenaline pulsed up his back. The terror of nearly falling was enough to bring him another temporary burst of energy, and he clawed up ten more meters before he had to stop. He was afraid he could never start again. His hands scored and bloody, Anakin huddled on a ledge and wiped them clean with his dirty tunic.

Then he stood and craned his head back, trying to see how much farther it was to the top. The stone veered sharply forward, two outthrust buttresses pronging together like the bow of a starfighter. It didn't look to be far, maybe twenty meters, but it would be the hardest climbing yet. There was only a thin crack splintering the wall.

He thought of his Master. He thought of the Jedi way. Then he drew in a deep breath, expelled it in a gusty roar, and threw himself at the cliff.

Anakin did not try to use compassion, to treat it as an equal that would bear him upwards if he let it. He did not have time. Instead, he attacked it, spattering the stone with dark blood, snarling under his breath and sometimes aloud, wrenching his fingers into the crack, his booted feet scraping sparks as they fought for traction. He fell into this last, lethal dance. He could not feel his bleeding hands, his aching legs, his throbbing head, the cramps in his back. All there was for him was the cliff, and the dark threads coiling around it, tangling around him, bearing him upwards.

He climbed so madly that he scarcely noticed when the cliff ended, and his arms parted the air wildly for a second before he toppled forward onto a blessedly broad, blessedly deep ledge, and sucked air painfully for long seconds, measuring the thunder of his heartbeat, the faint whistle as his blood screamed in his ears.

After a long time, Anakin rose to his hands and knees and looked around. This was more than a ledge, it was a cave, and a sizeable one at that. The view was spectacular; this far up, you could almost see the faint curve of the horizon.

In front of him, the cave opened up into a huge, echoing chamber. Dry stalactites hemmed the ceiling, and the floor was studded with afterthoughts of stalagmites. However, that was not precisely what had captured his attention. Blue beacons winked at him from every corner.

Anakin swore. His would-be assassins most likely already knew he was here, and so there was only thing he could do. He gathered the Force, formed it into an invisible fist, and smashed all the beacons at once.

There was a juddering, muffled explosion, and transparisteel shattered onto the floor, glowing liquid seeping through cracks and disappearing. He would have to hope that no one had heard that, and at least now they couldn't….

Just then, Anakin realized what he was doing. He was taking power in his fury, making the Force his tool – exactly what the Jedi had always warned him against. Even more frighteningly, it worked. He had wanted to lie down and die as long as he tried to respect the cliff, but when he grew angry at it, attacked it, he had climbed.

Anakin spread his knees, put his hands on them, his head between them. Blood rushed to it, sprucing the cave with a thousand sparking lights. _I am not doing it for myself, I'm doing it for Obi-Wan. The true path to the dark side is when you think only of and use your power for yourself. You can't tell me the Jedi never grow angry, have never, ever used that to their advantage? We have to survive, after all._

Somewhat comforted by this rationalization, he stood up. His tunic was filthy, blood-spattered and dust-streaked, but it made no matter. He raked a hand through his short hair, only succeeding in staining it as well, then squared his shoulders.

_I'm coming, Master._

* * *

Since there was nothing else to do, Obi-Wan had taken the liberty of inspecting his cell thoroughly. Aside from the pallet and the glowlamp, there was very little of interest, so he had gone back to the exposed wires of the comm panel and wasted a few minutes trying to see if any of it could be used to jury-rig the door, but had only earned himself scorched fingers. While he sucked on his burned hand, he renewed his search for the exit. If his mysterious visitor could get in, he had to be able to get out.

He had spent hours groping the wall where the turbolift door had split open, breaking off his fingernails and bloodying his knuckles, but he still could not find the slightest hint of a crack. Confounded, Obi-Wan rocked back on his heels. Then an idea occurred to him. He reached for the Force, and when the familiar, if somewhat enervated, wave surrounded him, he reached out, brushing glowing tendrils against the door, working vines of power into it, searching…searching…

There it was. A small hasp.

Obi-Wan _nudged_ it, eyes closed in concentration, letting himself become a vessel, overflowing with power and energy. In reverence and humility, he gave himself over to that flow, obliterating his own consciousness and joining a larger reality, where he was no more than a bright streak. The waterfall spilled over him, encasing his weary body in its glowing, soothing gush.

Obi-Wan drowned willingly for what felt like ages, aware of nothing but the coiling threads building up around the door. He channeled it until he was only a conductor along a greater pathway, a grateful and devoted servant. He opened his eyes.

The hasp had not budged.

Obi-Wan frowned. He knew that his skill had weakened with his physical self, knew that the Force was scant enough on Raxus Prime as it was. Still, this was only a thin latch, not particularly complex, no harder to manipulate than a rusted knob…

Obi-Wan felt the first beginning of frustration, a red-hot coil pulsing up through the Force. Aghast, he quickly shut it off, but not before he noticed that when that steaming, anger-fueled thread touched the clasp, it _moved._

Horrified, Obi-Wan stared at the door. He saw now. This clasp would not respond to soft, careful nudges, with him working as the servant. To open it, he must master it, seize the Force and command it to do as he wanted.

_A trap, _Obi-Wan realized, something hot and sickening congealing in his stomach. He could do that, and open it, or he could –

At that moment, a prolonged _hissssss _made him look about. A pale green mist spitting into the room, uncoiling like a serpent's tongue, flicking out to probe the air –

– Or he could stay here and die unpleasantly.

The first tinges of fear began to gnaw at Obi-Wan, chinking his armor. Vivid streaks of emotion threaded into the shimmering, colorless sheet of the Force, twisting it and thrusting it, pushing it forward like knives. His eyes burned from the gas.

Obi-Wan did not have much time.

* * *

Count Dooku watched the Jedi Master from the tiny cam that had been placed in his cell. At last, he had shown some initiative – as if he'd ever find anything interesting in the _comm panel, _for goodness' sake. Dooku tutted. As Masters went, he had seen far more impressive ones that had died just as easily.

Dooku had been the one, of course, that had pressed the button to pump the green mist into the room. It smelled like an Aqualish sewer, true, and might sting Master Kenobi's precious eyes, but little else… at first. He would have plenty of time to get out if he would only face his weakness and adapt. Wasn't that what a Jedi was supposed to do?

Dooku had no real reason to want the Jedi dead, yet. He could be used as a bargaining tool or as an accomplice, but first, he had to realize the power he could have if only he would stop being so bloody submissive. If he didn't, Dooku supposed he would have to split the cell open and drag the noble idiot out himself.

"Come _on, _you fool!" Dooku hissed at the readout. He could see the coils of the Force massing about Kenobi as clearly as if they had had a physical presence in the room, but there was no sullen red of anger, no glowing orange of frustration. There _was _a sickly yellowish tinge of fear, so that was a start.

The mist sucked eagerly at Kenobi's boots. Now the Jedi was holding his breath, the oceanic blue of concentration starting to edge out the fear. It still wasn't working.

"Anger!" Dooku muttered. "Rage! Use them! You know_ nothing_ of power." In a way, he almost felt sorry for the pure naïveté of this so-called Master. If he had just used the darker Force to start with, he would be out of there by now, and Dooku was starting to worry that the fool was going to pass out.

His fingers searched out another knob, and the gas flow stopped. Too late. Obi-Wan gagged as he drew one breath too many, and he slumped against the door.

Dooku swore and punched the remote-control for the turbolift. The seemingly boneless Master tumbled directly into it, and the doors slammed shut. The pressurized capsule whirred away, leaving the foul, gassed cell behind.

Dooku switched off the screens and leaned back in his chair. That settled it; Kenobi was completely worthless. His Master had been right, as always – Skywalker was the powerful one, the one worth pursuing. Still, Kenobi might be worth something as a backup – _if_ his bloody stubborn pigheaded resistance didn't get him killed first.

After a few more seconds, Dooku stood up. He sensed Skywalker's presence in the Force; the apprentice was taking one too many lessons from the Master when it came to the subject of loyalty. Well, he had his orders. No harm would come to him.

Dooku hurried out. He had to make sure that everyone _else _knew that as well.

* * *

Anakin entered the cave cautiously, keeping a sharp lookout for more of the blinking security beacons, but only ten steps in, he realized what they were guarding. This was some sort of landing pad, a hidden bunker, and deeper in, he came across a few small, one-man fighters – no heavy artillery, no stealth shields, built for speed.

They looked new, with fresh paint and chrome trimming, but the Separatist symbol was etched prominently on the left wing of each. There was no doubt that this was indeed their rumored Raxus Prime hideout, but this couldn't be the half of it. Everywhere the Separatists went, they were trailed by an entourage of battle droids, and transport of those required massive container ships.

Perhaps he shouldn't have thought that last bit so loudly.

At the far end of the cave hangar, a door revolved open and blinding bright light spilled through the teeth of the stalactites. Anakin immediately dropped flat, wedged uncomfortably between the landing claw on one starfighter and the boarding ladder on the other, hoping that his dark cloak would hide him.

Two skeletal figures resolved themselves out of the harsh glow – battle droids, mechanical hands clutching standard-issue blasters. But nothing strong enough to throw a jolt into him as that one shot had. Anakin lay very still.

"Check it out, captain," croaked the first, bobbing on its ridiculous jointed knees.

"Roger roger." With much clattering and head-swaying, the two droids began to troop forward, their two-toed feet skidding on the wet rock.

With a great effort, Anakin did not move. He kept one hand resting on his lightsaber.

"Over there, captain." One droid extended a gaunt metallic finger, directly at him.

"Roger roger. Hey! You!" The droids broke into a run, which would have been humorous in any other situation – limbs splaying and waving wildly, heads bobbing frantically, their pea-sized automated brains triggering programmed responses to ready their blasters.

Anakin wasted no time. Even as the droids were leveling their guns to fire, he exploded upwards, shedding his robe and drawing his lightsaber at the same time. He flipped well over their first hurried, clumsy shot and sliced them both in half as he came down. Their painted torsos clattered noisily to the ground.

Anakin, barely breathing hard, stepped back. Two droids were nothing, but he had a sudden, distressing _bad feeling _about this. If smashing the beacons hadn't been enough, the abrupt demise of two sentries would certainly alert someone.

If it hadn't, Anakin was worried that this was becoming almost too easy.

* * *

Dooku could not believe his eyes as he watched the security cams in the hangar. The droids – no doubt personal guards of Nute Gunray – had the audacity to challenge young Skywalker, and, predictably, earned themselves burning blue plasma through the midriff. Glowing metal scrap crashed onto the rock, spraying rivets everywhere.

"Gunray…." Dooku snarled. He knew that the Neimoidian was excessively paranoid about the Jedi ever since Kenobi and Jinn had a hand in beating him, but sending the droids after Skywalker directly contradicted an explicit order from Lord Sidious.

Instead, Dooku switched the viewscreen back to the interior of the turbolift. Kenobi was still unconscious, but he was starting to twitch; he would be stirring in a few minutes, and if Gunray sent droids after _him, _Dooku would give into a longing that he had had for a long time, and strike the viceroy's head off himself.

Kenobi was, it seemed, incorruptible. That was all right, he was a secondary target, and his use right now was luring Skywalker in. Once they were sure he was safely contained, Dooku would punch the skydoor into place, and blaster-proof metal shields would bar the hangar. _Although possibly not lightsaber-proof… _

Dooku paused, frowned, then smiled again. If they did get through, he had to remember that there was a sheer cliff beyond.

Once they had Skywalker, it was likely that Kenobi would meet a tragic end. The loss of his beloved Master would stun the apprentice, leave him dazed, desperate for revenge, open the floodgates for his fury. No real need for the boy to see the Jedi Temple again… he could be kept in a secure place until they thought he was dead, and _then, _Skywalker the Sith could stun them all. Dooku felt a brief twinge of pity for Qui-Gon's old Padawan, then it was gone as quickly as it had come. After all, his own deepest flaw – his stubborn loyalty – had gotten him into this.

He watched. In the hangar, Skywalker had dispatched a straggler droid without difficulty; in the turbolift, Kenobi was just staggering to his feet and trying to figure out why he wasn't dead. Amusing,_ if_ you counted the Jedi contemptible – he still had too much respect for their power, limited as it was, to do so.

He sat back. His Master would be very pleased indeed.

Light-headed and disoriented, Obi-Wan rose carefully from his knees, then braced himself against the wall. He couldn't for the life of him understand how he had gotten into the turbolift, or why he was conscious at all. Hadn't he breathed the gas – he remembered the room disintegrating into black streaks –

Just then, the turbolift ground to a halt, and the door swished open. Beyond, there was a dark corridor, lined with metal blast hatches and pitted synthstone, but the floor was smooth steel, worn with dark grooves. It was low enough that he had to stoop, and even as he stepped out and the turbolift hummed and retracted behind him, he knew what this passage had been built for – an access chute for droidekas.

Obi-Wan would have traded half the years of his life for his lightsaber.

Keeping low and light on his feet, he began to slip down it, looking around warily for any droidekas. Aside from the fact that he would be an unarmed, running target, there was no room in the tunnel for them to pass. Not that they _would, _when they could embroider him so neatly with a hail of blasterfire.

It grew darker, and Obi-Wan ran hard into a wall when the chute abruptly switched directions. He drew a sharp, hissing breath and sponged gingerly at his nose with the sleeve of his tunic.

Behind him – a faint rattling –

Obi-Wan broke into a clumsy, stumbling, all-out run. His entire body was emaciated and his flesh hung from his bones; he had been a captive for a long time. His legs did not want to obey him, and the shreds of muscles began to shriek in protest, and then Obi-Wan lost his footing and tumbled wildly down the chute, trying to escape the noise behind him, which he was certain were droidekas. He could not understand why the deadly sluices of blasterfire had not yet exploded through the tunnel.

He crashed hard against a closed access grate and lay there, winded, staring at the ceiling. Then he let the pain go with a few deep, rasping breaths, struggled to his knees, and began to work frantically at the grate.

The crashing was getting closer. In half-darkness, scraped and dazed, Obi-Wan worked with urgency, but without frustration or despair.

The crashing was almost on top of him.

The grate gave.

And Obi-Wan tumbled down out of the darkness and fell very heavily on top of his very surprised Padawan.

* * *

Anakin had been edging along the wall, screamingly on guard, ready to take anything that leapt out at him, when he crashed to the floor from something that had leapt _onto _him. For a second, he couldn't breathe, then he rolled away, sprang to his feet, ignited his lightsaber –

And froze. Lying where he had just been was his Master, skeletal and exhausted, shielding his eyes against the glare. He looked as if he had no idea where he was, who he was, or why he was staring at a tall young man waving a glowing sword.

"_Master!" _Anakin punched madly at the power button on his lightsaber, flung himself to his knees, and completely shattering all the rules against emotional attachment, yanked Obi-Wan into his arms, crushing him with vicious strength, hugging him until all the scanty breath left in his Master was expelled in an _erp. _

Anakin pulled back and looked at him critically. "You smell terrible."

"Padawan," said Obi-Wan faintly. "I'm very glad to see you too, but we have a small situation – "

"Did they hurt you?" Anakin demanded.

"_Anakin, _look, now is not the time, we have about…I don't know how many destroyers coming down that chute after me – "

Anakin sprang to his feet. Sure enough, he could hear the telltale rattling, and Obi-Wan's dramatic crash-through had left the access grate wide open. With a _snap-hiss, _the blue blade of his lightsaber sheared out again. "Get behind me, Master."

"Anakin, what are you – "

"_Get behind me!" _Anakin and Obi-Wan dove to one side in concert as the first blaster bolts began to rattle the air, searing it with brilliant laser trails and the strong stench of ozone. Anakin rolled to his feet at once and began parrying them, lightning-fast

Behind him, he heard his Master mutter, "I would _kill _for a lightsaber – "

Anakin dodged another flurry of bolts and launched himself into the air, flipping backwards, landing on his feet, and running. "We have to steal a speeder!" he shouted. "It's a cliff – "

Not getting a chance to finish this sentence due to an onslaught from the droids, Anakin flung himself down a dark side passage and waited, praying that Obi-Wan's traitorous body would carry him clear of the shots. His wish was granted a few seconds later, as his Master appeared beside him. He looked worried, on edge, which should be understandable given the situation, but instead served to show how grave it in fact was. Obi-Wan and fear had never been well acquainted.

"There is a great darkness here," he said, "and you are growing distracted with your concern for me. You must – "

"I know," said Anakin, and echoed the rest of Obi-Wan's lecture with him. "Keep your senses in the present. Be mindful of the _living _Force, young Padawan."

His Master's smile was slightly rueful. "I used to hear that all the time from Qui-Gon. Perhaps in a way I am him, and you are me." He put a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "You've done well. Now, we just have to find a way to – "

"Get out," said Anakin. The droids were rattling after them, and they had only scant seconds before they might be discovered.

"There is that," Obi-Wan allowed.

They turned the corner, and the earthy warren sloped low enough that both Jedi had to crouch. Anakin moved in front as the walls closed around them, and the reek of wet earth and a fetid animalistic stench grew stronger. "What's that?" he demanded.

"I was hoping you knew," said Obi-Wan. "I've spent a good deal of time in a cell."

Anakin rolled his eyes. "Wonderful."

The tunnel ended in a low, dark space, black enough that Anakin was tempted to ignite his lightsaber for illumination, but Obi-Wan's hand on his arm stopped him. "No… not yet."

"When do you suggest _yet?" _said Anakin edgily.

Obi-Wan opened his mouth, then froze. Just outside the corridor, coming steadily closer, was the unmistakable rolling clank of droidekas. They were still being hunted.

Anakin pressed his back into the corner, hoping that the darkness would muffle the droids' photoreceptors. He debated using a Force trick, but affecting wouldn't work on all of them, and a mask might only have limited effect.

"Master?" Anakin whispered. The two of them were mashed so closely together, Obi-Wan's beard tickled his mouth. "Just out of professional curiosity, what are we planning to do?"

Obi-Wan glared at him and slapped a finger to his lips. Anakin subsided.

The droidekas drew closer. Anakin took a step backwards, and then, suddenly – there was _nothing _underneath his feet, and he jumped back as if he had been burned, but then – he was _alone._

"Master!" Anakin hissed, as loudly as he dared. He looked around, blinking furiously, then noticed a round, black hole just inches from his feet, open and breathing, the source of that bad, rotting stench. Obi-Wan, further demonstrating what bad straits he was in, had evidently managed to fall straight into it.

"Great. Just great," Anakin muttered to himself. The droidekas would round the corner at any second, and then they would certainly flood this smelly little niche with hundreds of watts of white light. There was nowhere to go except –

Down.

Anakin pulled his hood over his face, drew his lightsaber but did not turn it on. Breathing shallowly through his mouth, he edged toward the hole, then stepped through and –

Plunged.


	5. Unfortunate Situations

**CHAPTER FIVE**

**Unfortunate Situations**

Darkness whistled up around him_, _swallowing him like a hungry rancor. Anakin kept his arms and legs bent, tears streaming out of his eyes with the force. He tried not to breathe – the fall batted it clean out of him anyway, and he was afraid that if he did, it would come out as a scream. Besides, the stench was horrible.

Anakin had a dim sense of a huge, horribly sentient cavern, studded with ancient pinnacles of limestone and mud – and something else_. _Something alive, and possibly more than one _something. _It was completely dark except for a thin, faraway beam of yellowish light that could not penetrate the murk.

The fall was just long enough for Anakin to wonder how far, and then the ground came rushing up to meet him. He uncoiled from his tuck, turned a flip, and landed heavily, wincing as his knees absorbed the blow.

"Master?" he asked, his voice falling flat against the dusty darkness.

No answer.

_To hell with concealment, _Anakin thought succinctly, and punched on his lightsaber. At once, the glowing blade sizzled to life, splintering strange shadows from his feet.

He had walked only a few paces when he found Obi-Wan, spread-eagled and silent. There was a vague look of surprise on his face, and he was bleeding copiously from the nose. Anakin felt as if someone had just hit him in the stomach.

He sprinted to his Master and rolled him over. "Don't do this, Obi-Wan," he muttered, propping the lightsaber up and feeling desperately for the older man's pulse. "C'mon – " He knew that Obi-Wan's skills had rusted, but still, he wouldn't –

Anakin felt it before he saw it, a seething, churning ball of stringy muscle, leathery wings, and sharp, raking talons. It hit him full-force and knocked him aside, dazed and winded. He was barely able to grab his lightsaber, and nearly stabbed himself, as he turned a painful somersault.

Shrieking, the thing settled over Obi-Wan and bent down to peck at his bloody face.

"No – you – _don't!" _Anakin roared. With that, he threw his lightsaber like a javelin, and it impaled the thing in the neck. It toppled off Obi-Wan, sent up an explosion of dust, and gargled, dying.

Furious, Anakin stomped over, seized the hilt, and drew his lightsaber out of the dead – bird? If it was a bird, it was the ugliest specimen he had ever seen, a huge, deformed thing with a wicked beak and long, sharp flaps of skin for ears.

"Gundark," Anakin muttered in disgust. He knew them – they lived on Tatooine, and anywhere else in the galaxy there was garbage. They were large airborne menaces that ate wiring and built nests in speeders and starfighters. Watto had kept a blaster pistol solely for the purpose of shooting them out of his rafters, and Anakin had been attacked by one when he was seven. That was the first time he could ever remember killing something in rage. Now that he was a Jedi, the idea repulsed him. But still, gundarks were only good when dead.

Anakin kicked at it for good measure, then turned and ran back to Obi-Wan. With a surge of relief, he saw that one of his Master's eyes had opened, and that he was struggling upright.

"Where are we?" a very woozy Obi-Wan murmured.

"There was a hole in the corridor. You took one step too many backwards, I just followed." Anakin knelt and helped Obi-Wan sit up. "You all right?"

"I've been better," his Master answered dryly.

"Come on. We have to find a way out of here." Anakin made a face at something that looked suspiciously like gundark guano. He hauled Obi-Wan to his feet, and his Master slumped heavily on his shoulder, eyes closed.

"Bad… idea?" Obi-Wan asked in a breathless whisper.

"Shhh. I'll figure something out." Anakin rotated uselessly on the spot, one arm around Obi-Wan's waist, scanning every possible crack and crevice in the soaring stone amphitheater. "Altogether, I think that yes, we've been better off."

"You don't say," Obi-Wan remarked, eyes closed.

"Come on," Anakin said again. Half-carrying his Master, he set off across the uneven, muddy, rocky ground, lightsaber in his free hand.

Obi-Wan stirred. "Anakin..."

"What?" Anakin's senses were stretched to the breaking point.

"We're not – _alone!"_

Obi-Wan screamed the last word as a small planet of gundarks exploded around them, ripping them apart, knocking Anakin hard to the filthy ground. He sprawled there, stunned, but he had no time to recover. The gundarks were all around him, tearing his clothes and face.

Anakin rolled to one side, and even as he came up, his lightsaber rose with him, shearing through flesh and muscle. He sprang toward the body of his Master, who had been beset by about half the hive. _A nest. Bloody wonderful. _Anakin braced his feet and swung the lightsaber in a savage, arcing curve that seared through more. They tumbled, bloodless and cauterized, dead before they hit the floor.

Anakin braced his feet on either side of his Master's shoulders and fought wildly. Gundarks flapped and billowed, shrieking and tearing, flying right into the sizzling energy blade and dying. Talons ripped at his face, and a hot gush of blood spilled down his cheek.

Obi-Wan was struggling valiantly, but there were enough gundarks on him to weigh down a Dreadnaught, never mind an average-sized man. The scent of blood excited them, and Anakin felt a stinging blow as they raked open his cheek. His _other _cheek. He hoped briefly that the wounds wouldn't scar.

Obi-Wan rose to his knees, and then a gundark plowed into him. Anakin heard his Master cry out in pain, and the sound infuriated him. He whirled about, slaughtering everything that he could get his lightsaber on.

When there was a split-second respite, Anakin plunged forward, seized his Master under the arms, and hauled him back to his feet – just in time to catch a gundark straight in the face. He gagged on the stench of it, registered that his lightsaber was ignited again, and belatedly realized that Obi-Wan had seized it and chopped the thing off him. "Th-thanks."

"Let's – get – out of here," Obi-Wan wheezed, his face an alarming shade of grey.

"Took the words out of my mouth." Stumbling and bloody, the two Jedi raced across the floor, barking their shins and slicing the tatters of their filthy clothes.

"This – isn't doing much – for your smell," Anakin choked.

"Less wit, more running," Obi-Wan fired back, Anakin's lightsaber still in his hand. Another gundark swooped at him, and he spun the sky-blue blade and seared it into two ragged hunks of steak.

"Far end – ladder," Anakin panted.

"Noted." Obi-Wan, looking somewhat like an animatronic scarecrow, stumbled and bled and fled across the seemingly never-ending cavern, Anakin hard on his heels.

They reached the slender metal ladder and thundered up it, Obi-Wan lashing out with the lightsaber, Anakin slightly panicked. It looked as if half the gundarks in the universe were trawling just beneath them, shrieking in protest.

Just ahead, there was a hatch. Obi-Wan tossed the lightsaber back to its owner and wrenched desperately at the release, until at last there was a hiss of escaped gas and a blaze of watery daylight hit him in the face. He struggled through, Anakin right behind him. The two of them flopped on the ground, heedless of dignity, and gasped desperately.

At length, they sat up. They were ensconced in a narrow access port that opened above the hangar. Anakin felt a jolt of relief at seeing it, and muttered to the still out-of-commission Obi-Wan, "We're almost free."

"Wonderful," Obi-Wan said, sitting up at last. He did not look good; there was blood all over his face and several deep bruises were visible through the almost-translucent fabric of his filthy tunic. Not to mention the smell. "I suppose you do have a plan for getting _down…?"_

"Of course," said Anakin, lying. "You don't think I'd break in without one?"

"Yes, actually, I do think so," said Obi-Wan, but he did not look angry as he said it, more wearily amused. "Well then, what are we waiting for?" He stood up, swayed briefly, and steadied himself. "Let's go."

"I'll go first." Lightsaber still firmly in hand, Anakin stepped forward, tensed, and made what he hoped would be the last long jump/fall of this mission. He whistled downwards, then his boots clanged noisily against durasteel plating and he rolled aside just as Obi-Wan crashed down after him.

Anakin offered him a hand, and Obi-Wan accepted it and hauled himself to his feet, breathing heavily. "The sooner this is over the better," he muttered.

"You can say that again," Anakin began, and then paused. The Force, as thin as it was, was chirping insistently like a tracker beacon. He'd thought at first it was remnants of the gundark incident, but suddenly he wasn't so sure, and looking back at Obi-Wan's suddenly uncertain face, he was convinced. Something else was wrong.

Obi-Wan caught up with him a second later, frowning, mopping his glistening forehead with the arm of his tunic, which traded sweat for dirt. "This is too easy. Something's wrong – they're laying a trap."

"I knew that," said Anakin.

Famous last words. No sooner had they been spoken than a low rumble shook the ground, pulsing through his bones. When he looked ahead, he saw the entire cave shuddering as two massive metal doors crashed together to bar the hangar. At once all the glowlamps went out, and left them in a pungent and pressing murk.

"What did I say about a trap?" Obi-Wan hissed in Anakin's ear.

A deep voice, its owner invisible in the darkness, laughed. "So it is, Master Jedi." Footsteps echoed wetly closer, followed by the telltale metallic clank of droids. "So it is. I hope you enjoy it. It has, after all, been designed just for you."


	6. Revelations

**CHAPTER SIX**

**Revelations**

"Oops," said Anakin, in extreme understatement.

Obi-Wan shot him a baleful glare, or at least in the direction of Anakin's voice. "Did you _expect _this? Did you _anticipate _this? Did you know they were here and go ahead with it anyway? How many times, Padawan, must we – "

"This isn't my fault!" Anakin protested. They stood back-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the combat position they had assumed a hundred times before. Obi-Wan was wary, every sense probing out through the Force. Had he mentioned that he would _kill _for his lightsaber?

Anakin, sensing this, nudged his elbow, as if to tell him that they'd somehow manage with just one. Obi-Wan doubted this in the extreme – but then again, it _was _Anakin on the business end of it, maybe he had a point.

The lights were still out. Obi-Wan closed his eyes, blinking hard. He prayed dearly that Anakin wouldn't be stupid enough to fire up his lightsaber.

Silence. Obi-Wan felt Anakin's shoulder tense against his.

And then – that voice spoke again, grand, sweeping, imposing, echoing through the hangar, the bay doors, the ventilation shafts. Whatever beacons Anakin had not smashed blinked in emphatic concert, and a slow, dim glow began to spread, suffusing slowly through the darkness.

"Master Kenobi…and even young Skywalker. What a pleasure."

A tall figure emerged from the glow, bracketed impressively by a full retinue of battle droids – and not just the Neimoidian-models, but the stronger, faster, and smarter _Gamma-_class. Their flexible durasteel skeletons were almost as agile as a Jedi, they could think as close to creatively as a droid ever could, and the twin blaster cannons built into their arms were capable of firing ten shots a second.

This gleaming army fell back, forming a semicircle around the impressive figure in a cloak of armorweave. The hood veiled his face, but invisible crackles of energy pulsed and snapped around him, threading a peculiar taint into the Force.

"We don't care what you have to say," said Anakin bravely. He raised his lightsaber.

A laugh, deep and musical, almost delighted. "My dear boy, you will care about _everything _I have to say_."_

Two long, delicate white hands reached up, two thumbs hooked gracefully beneath the cowl, and it fell back.

And two Jedi stared in disbelief.

* * *

"My friends," said Count Dooku, a beatific smile gracing his serene, silver-bearded face. "Don't be afraid – I would never let these _machines _hurt you." He made a disparaging gesture, and the closing ranks of droids retreated, lowering their blasters, combat subroutines flickering out. They stood stock-still, awaiting further orders.

Obi-Wan was flabbergasted. _"Adeus Dooku?"_

Anakin frowned, not relaxing his guard. "_Who?"_

"None other, Master Kenobi," said Dooku, the essence of security and composure. He stepped forward. "What a pleasure to see you."

Obi-Wan was completely discomfited. "I was a prisoner, Adeus. Droids – a cell – a man came to visit, it _must _have been you – and you have been the one in charge all along, certainly? Did you not know that I was a Jedi?"

"Yes, Master Kenobi. Perfectly well," said Dooku, still smiling. "How could I not?"

There was something wrong about that smile, Obi-Wan thought, as if Dooku's face had frozen and then it had been painted on. His gaze did not seem to be quite fixed on them, drifting off into the cluttered machinery and the abandoned starfighters. He seemed to be perfectly unconcerned about holding a pleasant conversation in an armored hangar while the place was crawling with battle droids.

"Now, young Skywalker," said Dooku, "is there any real need to hurt someone?" He flicked a finger toward Anakin's lightsaber, which had just blazed to life. "It's not particularly….decorous."

"Anakin," said Obi-Wan. He made a sign on his cheek, glowering at his apprentice.

"Corralling us with battle droids doesn't seem to be _friendly,_" Anakin answered. He flicked a finger up across his eyebrow, and down. Long ago, he and Obi-Wan had come up with hand signals to communicate silently in the field of fire.

Obi-Wan glared at him. "Might I remind you that I am _weaponless?_ Honestly, Anakin…"

"Sorry, Master." Anakin planted himself in front of Obi-Wan again. "If you want to say something," he growled at Dooku, "you'd better do it."

Dooku laughed. Obi-Wan's _bad feeling about this _grew exponentially stronger.

"I have much to say," Dooku agreed, "but not here, not now. I fear that my…associates may be discomfiting you." He turned to the droids, spoke in a low and commanding voice, and they retreated several more yards.

"You seem to be their master, Dooku," Obi-Wan remarked warily.

"I am." Dooku's strange smirk widened. "I have become their master, and the master of a great many other things in addition. I know things you can scarcely dream of, Master Kenobi. Even – _especially – _with your devotion to the Jedi."

"Devotion to the Jedi?" said Obi-Wan, bewildered. He was trying to keep up with this, but the twists and turns were throwing him wildly down a never-ending slide. "But Master – Dooku – you were a Jedi as well, surely…"

"_Were, _Master Kenobi, is exactly the point," said Dooku, a cognoscenti smile flickering over his thin lips. He moved forward, almost light enough to glide. "And we cannot have you making a disturbance. Nothing personal, of course. Qui-Gon Jinn would never forgive me if I let something happen to his old Padawan."

Anakin had never even seen so much as a chink in Obi-Wan's composure, but now, a sizeable chunk of it splintered and crashed. "Qui-Gon is _dead_. Nine years now."

"Of course…how terrible." Dooku's eyes dropped; he seemed to grow older before their eyes. "It is not only you who grieves for him, Master Kenobi. After all, he was my own Padawan."

Obi-Wan, realizing that an all-too-simple truth had sliced his calm demeanor to shreds, took a deep breath, and the flaws were patched as if they had never been. "Yes. Very well. If you have no objections, Adeus, then – well – this _is _a bit odd, so…Anakin and I shall just…be off."

"The name," said the other, "is _Dooku _now. I shed _Adeus _with the Order, and Master Kenobi, I do object to your leaving." He waved a hand, and the droids began to close in. "You see, I would hate to see this snare completely undone."

"Master," said Anakin under his breath, "we have a problem. Several hundred of them, actually."

"I know, I know." Had Obi-Wan mentioned what he would do for his lightsaber?

As if Dooku had read his mind – and perhaps he had – he lifted a graceful hand. He held up a slender titanium cylinder, studded with power buttons. This was more than Obi-Wan's weapon – it was his life, his definition, almost his own _being._

Anakin, realizing what it was, smirked. "This makes a nice change. You're always telling _me _not to lose _my _lightsaber, and now – "

"This is not the time for japes," Obi-Wan said through gritted teeth. He looked at Anakin, imprinting the message on his mind through the Force.

_Can you distract them long enough for me to get my lightsaber free?_

_I can try, Master._

_Anakin, don't make me quote Yoda at you._

_Sorry, Master._

_No more time. Go!_

They moved, as always, in perfect sync. Anakin's lightsaber snapped to life with a deep _thrum._ But as the blue blade sheared out, Obi-Wan was already moving. He sprang backwards, precisely evading the bright slashes of blasterfire from the droids. Dooku was shouting something, but Obi-Wan did not care. The physical world faded to a penumbrous haze, and then there was only the Force.

Obi-Wan directed the glowing, humming threads of energy that coruscated and writhed through his fingers, his hands, his entire body. He saw Dooku clearly in the Force, an imposing figure wreathed in power, but of a darker sort, an angry red.

Obi-Wan did not allow himself to become distracted. He searched for and found the focus point, the lightsaber, and wound his own life energy into it, tugging, coiling it around, becoming nothing more than a bright spot to pull it in.

The bright spot pulled back.

Obi-Wan, startled, let even more of the Force flow. He didn't have time for this – but Dooku was fighting him, tearing him back into existence, repelling all of his efforts. Obi-Wan had still been a young Padawan when Dooku had fled the Order, and he knew him to be a strong Jedi, but there was some sort of violent wall of power here, something different, that Obi-Wan could not claw through.

_Anakin!_

_I'm a… bit distracted, Master._

"Come, come, Master Kenobi," said Dooku, teeth bared in something that was not a smile. "The Order thinks very highly of you. I am spending but little of my power to keep you back, surely you can shatter this?"

The strange, hot taint in the Force-threads grew stronger. Dooku raised a hand, and Obi-Wan felt them coiling, nestling up and around his neck like choking serpents. He gasped, and the world's edges began to blur.

Faintly, he heard Anakin roar. A lightsaber flashed, and then he was free, plunging downwards into a somersault, jumping to his feet, and shuddering all over. He felt a brief weakening – a shock against his face, and then –

His lightsaber sailed into his hand.

Obi-Wan allowed himself a brief, vicious smile. Now, it ceased to matter that he was starving, wasted, too long a prisoner – his skills came rushing back as if they had never been away. As the blue-white blade sparked to life, he thought the most satisfying thing he had ever seen in his life was the look on Dooku's face.

In a second, he was at his Padawan's side. The two of them worked as a four-armed, double-headed, seamlessly integrated team, dual blazes of plasma lashing out. Both caught a droid through the midriff, reversed at blinding speed, and swept out to burn through the braincases of two more. The air reeked of scorching ozone and molten metal, and it echoed with the thrum of lightsabers and the scrape of boots on steel.

But even as Obi-Wan reveled in the fact that his skills had not gone entirely to waste, he realized one very important thing about this fight – the droids weren't firing. They had their blasters up, their photoreceptors focused squarely on the two Jedi –and yet, they had not squeezed off a single shot.

Dooku stood in the midst of the chaos, watching as if he was amused to see all the battle droids taken down wholesale. They _were_ expensive; surely he must mind to see the Jedi hacking them to pieces? When at last one of them did get a shot off, Anakin's parry and deflect was faster than light. The laser bounced back, spliced off a wall, and bisected a fleeing droid –

This was wrong. This was very wrong.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said, lowering his lightsaber a fraction. "They're not firing."

Anakin whirled around, buried his blade in the sternum of a collapsing droid, then frowned at his Master. "What?"

"Remember to be in tune with the true reality, Anakin, not what you _think_ is occurring," Obi-Wan said. "They are not attacking."

"Yes, but…" Frowning, Anakin remained set in a ready stance. "Master, why go to all this trouble if it wasn't an attack?"

Obi-Wan glanced suspiciously sideways at Dooku. "Anakin, he has no good reason to let us go. The Jedi Council will want to know that he has joined the Separatists, and he will not let us live to carry the news to them."

Dooku overheard them. "Oh, not at all, my friends," he said lightly. "_Joined _would hardly be the right word. I would prefer…. controlled."

"That's it, Master." Anakin's lightsaber came flashing back up. "I don't care what you say, this is – "

"I don't – "

A lightsaber carved blazing splinters, flashing and humming. Droids advanced, fell. Obi-Wan's shout of, "_ANAKIN!" _went completely unnoticed. His Padawan was swallowed in a whirling blue vortex.

When half of Dooku's personal corps lay in smoking shambles, and the rest had suddenly remembered urgent appointments elsewhere, Anakin finally deactivated his lightsaber. Obi-Wan was staring at him, aghast and not a little furious. Anakin had never defied him so brazenly before.

"Anakin – "

"This isn't the time or place to argue, Master, you know as well as I – "

" – why don't you _listen _to me – "

"Not _now, _Master!" Anakin prowled in a wary circle, blue eyes fixed on the Count, who still seemed completely unperturbed. "I'm trying to get us out of this!"

"With what? Your lightsaber? Anakin, this is all very well and good, but – "

"I know you like diplomatic solutions. Just call this aggressive negotiations."

"_Anakin – "_

"You seem to have difficulty controlling this spirited young man," Dooku broke in smoothly, as if picking up a conversation that had been unfortunately interrupted. "Skywalker, is not _obedience _the Jedi way?"

He was rewarded by watching the boy blink, confused, as if he had never thought of this. Kenobi looked furious, but about as tough as a sheet of flimsiplast. His long imprisonment and his ridiculous insistence on breathing the gas, not to mention his side excursion with the gundarks, had weakened him drastically. If the droids _had _wanted to kill him, it would have been only too easy.

Skywalker seemed to notice this. He edged protectively closer to him, shielding the exhausted Master with his own body. Clearly, the boy was prepared to chop everything to bits as long as it secured him and his beloved Kenobi passage out. This _would _be useful, later, but certainly not in the present situation.

Well, no need to make this difficult. Let Skywalker wave that lightsaber around as much as he wished. There was no way he could hack through the blast doors all by himself, and then… Dooku's ever-present smile crept back to his lips.

Kenobi looked as if he could barely stand. His eyes were closed, he had sunk to his knees – a threat? Hardly. Skywalker was poised in front of him, his lanky body frozen. One starfighter was close behind the Jedi, its exhaust hose coiling through Skywalker's legs like a snake.

Dooku reached into the Force. Chunks of durasteel sheared off and crashed to the floor, leaving deep gouges and spraying sparks. Conduits and piping rattled hoarsely in a sudden, unnatural gale. Dooku did not wait for the Force to direct him. Rather, the roles had been reversed.

Kenobi was blown sideways. A transparisteel lancet sliced through his shoulder, and skittered away, stained red. If Dooku had hoped to see the Jedi Master scream, however, he was disappointed. Kenobi grimaced, then seemed to accept the fact of the pain and let it flow out of him.

Skywalker did not take to the Force-gale nearly as kindly, however. He leapt about ludicrously, laying left and right, slicing debris into even more fragments, as if he was going to single-handedly reduce the flying rafters to dust.

"Anakin!" Kenobi shouted, uselessly. The Padawan was out of control, lightsaber whirling and devouring, a hungry sky-colored maw. Kenobi skidded to one side and rolled under a heavy pylon for cover. Dooku decided this was perfect. In a second, quite by accident of course, that pylon's heavy, five-hundred-year foundation would snap clean through, and, tragically, never give Master Kenobi any time to escape –

_Wait _a second. He had not commanded that one starfighter nearby to slip its moorings – in fact he had been holding it very still, as to not reduce himself to a smear on the wall. No Sith Lord had ever been inadvertently crushed by a rogue starfighter, and Dooku did _not _intend to be the first.

Instead, the thing tumbled sideways, neatly skirting Skywalker and plowing over a reserve battalion of droids that had unwisely decided to join the skirmish. Leaving them as molten, sparking smears on the stained hangar floor, the starfighter clipped a wall and spun to a stop in front of Kenobi.

Just as the pylon began to crack, Kenobi moved, faster than lightning. Dooku whirled, aghast. He had been so absorbed in watching Skywalker go crazy that he had completely forgotten about the seemingly helpless Master. And, with true Jedi cunning, Kenobi had taken advantage of the situation, even used Dooku's control of it to his gain – with everything flying, who would mind a starfighter?

The pylon collapsed. Kenobi was already leaping clear, landing on the starfighter and toppling into the cockpit. When he yelled, "ANAKIN!", his Padawan did turn, narrowly avoided decapitation, and leapt up. The cockpit slammed closed.

Dooku charged forward. Somehow, impossibly, Skywalker the legendary pilot had already got the blasted thing _warmed, _and the sudden roar of the sublights nearly blasted Dooku off his feet. A hot blue rush flooded the hangar, and Dooku's frantic attempts to put a Force-hold on it were in vain.

Behind him, the peppery staccato of blasterfire broke out. Unable to understand how this was going so badly, Dooku whirled again, his singed cloak flying, and saw an approaching corps of droids resolutely opening fire on the hijacked starfighter. But they had no effect, as the bolts bounced off the deflector shield – there was no _way _Skywalker could have gotten that operational as well! And that wasn't the only thing he'd somehow hotwired – the heavy dual turbolaser extended and fired approximately a thousand bursts into the controls for the hangar door. Even from outside, Dooku could hear Kenobi's enraged roar of, _"ANAKIN SKYWALKER!"_

The hangar gaped open, letting in a gust of cold air and a rush of sand. Dooku screwed up his eyes, staring after the starfighter. Well, this _was _a problem, but no matter – they had approximately seven seconds until the emergency power system kicked in, and even Skywalker couldn't get a starfighter through the gap _that _fast –

The door was already rolling back into place. The starfighter had hit such blinding speeds it was barely visible. Five seconds later, the door crashed against the jamb with a sound like thunder. The starfighter was gone.

Disbelieving, Dooku stared at the oxidized stain where it had been. It was uncanny how easily the Jedi had evaded his trap, used his powers and his situation to _their _advantage, and he swallowed hard. Lord Sidious was _not _going to be pleased.

They would have to start all over again, and they would.

A prize as rich as Skywalker was worth dying for.


	7. Regrouping

CHAPTER SEVEN

Regrouping

A matched pair of Delta-6 starfighters popped Raxus Prime's gravity well and soared out into space, flying as close as if the pilots wished to shake hands. Their scarred bellies kissed as they twisted through a complex configuration, then they parted and soared away to frame the dusty, silent planet below them.

"_Thank you, Padawan," _said Obi-Wan, keying Anakin's frequency into his comm. "_Let's not have that happen again."_

"_Yes, Master," _said Anakin meekly, accepting the implied rebuke. He sent his starfighter spinning downwards for the sheer thrill of it, then pulled up mere feet from a small asteroid. Arfour clacked and tootled a warning, but Anakin ignored him. "_I'm glad we could track down your Delta. I wasn't keen on flying back to Coruscant with you stuffed beneath my seat. The stench might have done for me."_

"_Who said it would be _me _stuffed beneath the seat?" _said Obi-Wan, a trace of amusement in his tone, but then it darkened. "_Anakin, we've learned something very grave. Count Dooku, Master Windu's old friend, has joined the Separatists."_

"_And tried to kill us," _Anakin remarked grimly. One hand held the starfighter steady while the other, having guided the Delta into its hyperdrive ring, entered the coordinates for Coruscant into the navicomputer.

"_I don't know if he would have," _Obi-Wan admitted, clearly doing the same thing. _"But still, the presence of a Force-user complicates things."_

"_When are they ever simple?"_

"_Never," _Obi-Wan agreed with a small chuckle. "_I'm ready."_

"_On your mark, Master."_

"_Three – two – one – "_

Stars stretched into glowing starlines, the universe bucked as it shed all normal dimensions, and Raxus Prime vanished in a supernova blur of hot light as two hyperdrives engaged at precisely the same moment. A fraction of a second later, the Jedi were gone.

"Lord Tyranus," said the white-haired man icily, "I am _not _pleased."

If it was possible, the hologram cringed. "I know, Master. I am sorry."

Outside the window, Coruscant teemed with life, the usual hectic traffic jumbling every level, the usual insane air-taxi drivers dodging through the mess of speeders, beings, advertisements, and suicides. Inside the tranquil, red-hued office, the same two men spoke.

"Lord Tyranus, you must be mindful. These Jedi escaped you."

"Only because I let them – "

"What was that?"

"Nothing, Master, I beg your forgiveness." The hologram straightened its charred armorweave cloak over its broad shoulders. "Next time they will not. Next time they will have no chance."

The white-haired man absorbed this with a mulling nod. "And Skywalker?"

"Mercurial, strong, quick-witted, impatient… above all, _powerful. _I have never seen his like, Master. But for all that, still loyal… to the wrong side. He loves Kenobi like a father. Skywalker will never submit to our teachings while he lives."

"And what do you suggest?"

"The same plan as it has always been, Master. Kill Kenobi."

"With respect, Tyranus, this plot of yours failed. Do you have another idea? The Sith must be flexible, inventive. The Jedi must be caught completely unawares."

"Well…" Tyranus said. "There is another way."

"Exactly. To not wrest Skywalker away forcibly… but to tempt him. Lure him, entice him, until he chooses it of his own will." Sidious smiled. "And breaks Kenobi's heart. He of all Jedi has had the most trouble with this rule about attachment."

"Yes, my lord," said Tyranus eagerly.

"But… not yet," Sidious answered musingly. "We have something else for the Republic to discover first. Our wonderful …. clones."


	8. Jabiim

**PART TWO**

**5 Months Before**

_**Revenge of the Sith**_

**MUUNILINST**

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

**Jabiim**

T_he bloody horizons of Jabiim spat and sang with war._

_Bodies and ruins were trampled into red mud. Overheard, the explosions of turbolasers rang against shields and armorplast, and bright fountains erupted against stationary and running targets alike. Atomic blasts shook the ground, throwing up gouts of rubble._

_On the muddy field beneath the laser-threaded sky, a mess of clones and droids tangled in battle. The droids were led by larger, more advanced, and even more pitiless versions of themselves; the clones, by a scattering of filthy Jedi. Lightsabers still flashed and buzzed, turning back an impossible array of bolts, but they looked exhausted, at the end of their strength._

"_Onward, I said! Get to the command center if it's the last thing you do!" the Jedi in the lead barked. He was tall and broad-shouldered, in quite as dismal shape as the rest, but his blue eyes raged with an uncontrolled fire. "Obi-Wan's there!"_

"_Skywalker, we can't – " a woman with a tattooed face began._

"_No __arguments, __Offee, or you can explain to him yourself who caused the delay!"_

"_Skywalker, we're at the end of our strength!"_

"_Maybe yours." Skywalker's blue blade sailed up, intercepting a volley of bolts so close they seared his cheek. "Not mine."_

"_This is madness, Anakin!" another Jedi shouted, this one a lithe green-skinned Twi'lek. "Master Kenobi's dead. We have to leave him, cut through this garrison, and get off-planet. Jabiim's a death-trap, nothing more."_

"_I won't leave him, Secura!" Anakin snapped back._

"_You are breaking the Jedi Code – "_

"_To__hell with the Jedi Code!"_

_He had meant it to shock, and it did. His two companions looked aghast, even as they never slowed, dancing their lethal waltz with bright-blinding death. The command center where they had taken Obi-Wan was just ahead._

_A bolt ripped through Anakin's right hand – his durasteel hand, fortunately, leaving a mess of sparking wires in its wake rather than scorched flesh. He snarled, furious with his own anger, and chopped through the next rank of droids like a butcher. Barriss Offee and Aayla Secura were screaming behind him, but he never heard it. Dust stung his nose and mouth, and the heat of combat pounded on his back._

_Ahead, the ranks of droids were parting. A tall figure came through them, hands spread, dressed in the glittering armor of a Separatist commander. At once, the droids ceased fire. The clones did not, until Anakin turned around and roared at them, "Stop your bloody blasters!"_

_The clones did so, of course. Obedience had been hotwired into their genetic code. Still, they did not relax from combat stances – they could not truly afford to lose more of their number. The Separatists had endless reserves of droids. The clone supply for the Republic had once seemed equally limitless, but it was starting to fade._

"_Skywalker," said the Separatist general, leering. "I expect you have come for your Kenobi."_

"_I have. I'll give you a choice. Step aside and let us through, with no harm to my forces, or – " Anakin raised his lightsaber into a vertical guard, then swept it out low and tight. "This."_

_The Separatist general appeared bored. "Threats from a stripling. I quiver in fear."_

"_I am __not __a stripling," Anakin snarled. "I am a commander of the Republic, and Master Kenobi is a __general.__ Now – step – aside." He could barely feel Obi-Wan, and it was making him as wild as a krayt dragon._

_He looked up. Just visible in the distance were the boxy silhouettes of Republic troopships. They were coming. If he could just manage to get Obi-Wan out ... they could all escape..._

"_You see, we __would __give him back to you. He's quite worn out his use," the general said. "However, I don't see what use you'd have for a corpse. Unless your soldiers are hungry." He sniggered. "That's the use of droids, boy."_

_Anakin snapped. He took one step forward and lifted his hand, curling his fingers. This was something he had never used the Force for, something that __no__ Jedi should__ ever should__. He did not care. He summoned its threads and coiled them around the general's filthy, mocking throat._

_The Separatist gasped, taunts frozen on his lips. The sheer force of Anakin's power and rage blasted him backwards, off the ground, as he gagged and tore at his neck. There was nothing for him to touch. Anakin closed his hand, and the Separatist's eyes bulged, feet kicking empty air._

"_He – is – not – __DEAD!" __Anakin screamed. "And if he is – I'll cut through your entire bloody army!"_

"_Skywalker!" __Offee barked. "Stop this! This is not Jedi behavior!" Even as she stepped forward, she was frightened. Anakin was powerful enough ordinarily, but his rage made him unstoppable. She had no wish to share the fate of the unfortunate general, now dangling a meter off the ground and wheezing futilely._

_Just then, Anakin lost the last touch of Obi-Wan's presence in the Force, and he howled in agony. He clenched his fingers into a bone-jarring fist, and the Separatist's neck snapped like a toy. His eyes rolled back into his head._

_Anakin drew his arm back and punched the air, and the general went sailing bonelessly backwards, crashing into a rank of droids. The face he turned to them was nothing that the Jedi recognized, a mask of pain and fury. "__No," __he cried, his voice more animal than human. The troopships were above them, expelling fresh clone replacements._

_Reserve troopers were fast-roping down long polyplast cords, as the troopships hovered as low as they dared. At once, the droids opened fire on them, but their handheld blasters could only scar the well-marked durasteel with fresh gashes._

_The clones were running for the transport, along with most of the Jedi. None of the latter could stop, as they might have wished, to bid last farewells to the hundreds of their kind that lay dead in the mud. Masters, Knights, and Padawans alike had been gunned down._

_Anakin Skywalker, Aayla Secura, and Barriss Offee still stood alone, ignored by all the droids, who were resolutely focusing their fire on the fleeing Republic forces. Clones stumbled, clones died, Jedi collapsed into the reeking muck, lightsabers and lives extinguished. The Force, a dark and distorted thing, bloated from slaughter, groaned in anguish._

"_He is __not dead.__"__ Bloody, dusty tears were spilling down Anakin's cheeks. "He __can't __be."_

"_Skywalker!" Secura seized one arm, Offee the other, and the two of them ignited their lightsabers, dragging their commander across the scorched ground, whirling to deflect the bolts now aimed in their direction. The troopship seemed to grow no closer at all._

_Anakin ripped free of their grasp and whirled, his own lightsaber still blazing. He shouted heedlessly at the droid army, the refracted bolts cutting them down like herded banthas. The stench of molten plate and wiring mingled with the filth and chaos of the battle._

_At last, they reached the troopship. Even as they struggled to board, Offee and Secura were having a hard time controlling Skywalker. He kept lunging at the drop-door, straining and twisting to break free, his gaze fixed through the viewport at the lone steel bunker below. Froth rimmed his mouth, and his eyes were utterly inhuman._

"_Skywalker, he's dead, we can't save him!" Secura shouted. "Please, we need you here!"_

_The troopship gathered the last clones who were going to make it, and the doors rumbled shut. Anakin made a final, convulsive lunge. Secura's nails cut his shoulder, and Offee's grip was bruising his arm. The ship's tortured sublights fired to life. Space grew nearer, and Jabiim, bloody hateful war-torn heartbreaking Jabiim, faded away behind._

_Anakin collapsed to the floor, pounded at it, and screamed._

* * *

_Obi-Wan Kenobi lay sprawled on the floor, the last scraps of consciousness draining from him. He was vaguely aware of the chaos below, shaking even the fortified bunker. The pain from the ugly, trenchant wound in his side made him nauseous. He had no idea if he was living or dying. His head dropped. His eyes closed. Outside, the ships roared away, and left him on the wreck that was Jabiim._

_Clone Commander Alpha lay beside him, bloody and scarred, in not much better shape. The two of them had fought to the end, and now they had been defeated, trapped, with no hope of rescue. Obi-Wan lay in blood and muck, losing his mind, waiting for the end._

_The floor shook with the reverberation of a single footstep. _

_Obi-Wan lifted his head. Onyx-black eyes met his._

"_Jedi. What a...surprise." The armored woman, her skin bone-pale, gazed down at him, insane fragments of pain and pleasure mingling in her gaze. "And a commander...__brave...__I think I am going to have such...__fun..."_

_Obi-Wan's last memory was of a scream. _

_He dearly hoped that it did not come from him._

* * *

Anakin still dreamed about it.

Even now, four scant months later, he could not possibly forget. Obi-Wan had been believed to be killed in action on Jabiim. Yet another battle had erupted when rich minerals had been discovered on the surface of this Republic-allied world, and the Separatists tried to take it by force. The civilians had fought back. And soon enough, Jabiim had become by far the most lethal of the Outer Rim Sieges.

And Obi-Wan had been captured there, along with Commander Alpha. Their jailer was named Asajj Ventress, and no one knew much of him except for the fact that he was cold and pitiless, a Force-user after a sort but certainly no Jedi.

Anakin had been on fire to return to Jabiim after that, but when he had, he had discovered that Obi-Wan and Alpha had been taken off-planet. He had chased them down through black-market hyperspace charts and underhanded dealing, erasing his Jedi identity completely, assuming the old mantle of Seetu Bagadoor, to finally reach the planet of Rattatak.

He was already too late. Obi-Wan had, _somehow_, managed to escape with Alpha. When Anakin had found him, Obi-Wan had been bleeding heavily, the wound in his side festering, barely aware of who or where he was. Anakin could only understand that Ventress, a twisted half-Sith with a deadly appetite for battle, had tortured them, clone and Jedi. Tortured _his _Obi-Wan.

Alpha was a clone; they had thousands of them. It was Obi-Wan that concerned him. Anakin had spent the endless flight to Coruscant by Obi-Wan's side, willing him back to life through the Force. Ventress could not take his Master from him.

Anakin could not forget it. It haunted him, eating his insides. The war festooned his dreams with all manner of gory images, but this was the one thing that had stayed, unshakably. The horrors of Jabiim and Rattatak had burned his old cockiness and self-assurance away, and left him a different man, a fragile shell with hot eyes.

That was what Anakin Skywalker feared. Loss.

And this was the one thing he would do anything to avoid.


	9. Deceptions

**CHAPTER NINE**

**Deceptions**

Coruscant at night was a glittering sieve of light.

Galactic City was a forest of chrome skyscrapers. They refracted the billions of lights from windows, speeders, holograms, advertisements, glowpanels, glowtubes, the phosphorescence seeping up through cracked permacrete, drowning out the faint and hazy stars. There was never darkness on Coruscant, only twilight, and its murky threads were constantly slashed by speeders, transports, taxis and convoys.

Twilight was an apt metaphor for many things. Especially truth.

The pilot of the tiny, two-pronged speeder tearing up the airlanes reminded himself, yet again, that he had not lied, not truly. It was only just part of reality, not a distortion of it. He was unremarkable in his dark cloak, and his speeder was scuffed and dented with use. It seemed impossible that anyone could care about or know him, not when Coruscant's underworld swallowed a thousand of his kind every day.

Anakin Skywalker shifted in his seat. It had not been a lie. It had not. He had told his Master, and the Council, the truth when they asked why he was going to the Senate building at this late hour. Chancellor Palpatine had requested to speak to him.

The Temple had received a transmission that evening on the Chancellor's personal frequency. He had sounded quite agitated, and would not specifically state what the problem was. He had asked if one of the Jedi could please come down to his office. Never mind the late hour, he said. Immediately, he said.

The Council had taken him at his word. A meeting had been called, names and theorems put forth, decisions made. And Anakin, as he usually was when it came to liaising with the Chancellor, had been sent along. Now, he found himself the sole occupant of a speeder slicing through Coruscant's chaotic spacelanes toward Five Hundred Republica, possibly the most exclusive address in the universe.

Frowning, Anakin opened the throttle even further. What little power he had not already been using sparked into the engines, and his tiny craft roared forward, cutting off an irate Malastarian. It was just that... seeing Palpatine was not the only thing he planned on doing. His pulse quickened as he guided the speeder deftly between two hulking airbuses. Once the business with the Chancellor was settled, there was another suite in Five Hundred Republica that Anakin had a mind to visit.

Padmé... Anakin's durasteel hand opened and closed. He hated this, an elaborate mechanism of sensors and wiring clamped to the stump of his right arm, masquerading as a part of him. He had no choice but to use it, not since a flashing scarlet blade had forced his forearm and elbow to unpleasantly part company. Sometimes, the memory of the pain woke him screaming in the night.

_At least I don't see things in them. _Anakin was leery of nocturnal visions, very much so, ever since his dreams had foretold the death of his mother at the hands of the Tusken Raiders. He had absolutely no intention of losing his wife to a similar vision.

_Just seeing her puts us both in danger. _Padmé existed solely in the ruthless, scheming, sordid world of galactic politics. She was a Senator of some repute – well-known, excessively scrutinized. The higher the rise, the harder the fall. If anyone knew of her marriage to a Jedi, the glass floor beneath her would shatter.

To say nothing of the consequences for him. Marriage, a deep and binding personal commitment, flew in the face of the Jedi Code, burning it and spitting on the ashes. It had only been permitted a handful of times in twenty thousand years. Most often, it was grounds for expulsion from the Order.

And Anakin could scarcely imagine a life without it. Who would he be, where would he go? He had been a slave on Tatooine before Qui-Gon Jinn had saved him, nothing worth remembering let alone going back to, and although he knew of many civilized systems, he had a home on none. _The Jedi sever all ties so you must depend only on them._

Except... _I could run away with Padmé. We could live on Naboo, with her family or up in the Lake Country. A sunburned porch, cool shaded terrace, azure evenings and rosy mornings... perhaps in time a child, a son or daughter of our own. _

A reluctant smile tugged at Anakin's mouth, even as he knew it was completely impossible. For one thing, Padmé would never agree, never, to let him leave the Order on her behalf. And what about Obi-Wan? What would he do if his former Padawan, and dearest friend, turned his back on the Jedi? Anakin held no illusions; he knew that it would break his heart. He himself valued Obi-Wan's companionship, guidance, and love beyond all measure.

Anakin's frown deepened. No matter how much he might dream, he would never leave the Jedi. He was the Chosen One they never told him about, and his raw power was higher than that of even the legendary Master Yoda. He had no life, no home save for the Temple. Not one he wanted, anyway.

There was no more time for speculation. He had reached Five Hundred Republica.

Anakin brought the speeder soaring down in a graceful arc to fit precisely in an empty docking bay. He powered down and popped the cockpit, then jumped free and landed lightly on the platform, but he had scarcely taken a step when two burnished security droids, so new that their fittings squeaked, thrust dual-barreled blasters in his face. "Undisclosed entity. Please identify immediately."

Anakin hated droids, aside from his trusty Artoo. He thought that his mechno-arm made him hate them more. Still, he attempted to speak politely, for all the good it did; protocol droids were the only ones programmed to recognize human emotion.

"Anakin Skywalker," he said. "I am a Jedi _Knight – "_ he stressed it on purpose, he liked the sound of it – "and my presence was requested by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine."

"One moment. Processing. Do not attempt to move."

The other droid barked, "Identi-chip requested – "

"Anakin, my boy," said a warmly paternal voice from the shadows near the door.

Anakin looked up in shock. The man standing there was none other than Palpatine himself, dressed in brocade and silk, his white hair immaculate. His blue eyes twinkled benevolently as they landed on the stunned young Jedi, frozen in the act of sneaking past the security droids.

"Chancellor!" Mobility regained, Anakin flew forward. "It's too dangerous, you shouldn't be out here – " He frowned. "Besides, isn't the Senate in session?"

"My dear boy, your concerns are touching, make no mistake, but have no fear. I am quite safe, let me assure you. However, I _do _wonder how you knew that the Senate was in session. It's not usually something the Jedi keep track of." Palpatine's gentle laugh took any implied sting from the rebuke.

Anakin flushed. In truth, that had been a mistake. He knew because Padmé had told him, of course, but he was hardly about to divulge that to the Chancellor.

"Mas Amedda will do an exemplary job in my absence, I am sure," Palpatine went on breezily, steering Anakin through the heavy transparisteel double doors and down the well-lit, plush corridor beyond.

Something was wrong here. "Chancellor," Anakin said, frowning, "when you called the Temple, you sounded worried. I came as quickly as I could. Is everything well?"

The smile dropped from Palpatine's face. Silent and grim, he merely urged Anakin down the remainder of the corridor, into his office. The shielded doors glided shut, leaving the Jedi and the Chancellor alone.

"Anakin," said Palpatine softly, placing his hands on the younger man's shoulders. "I am afraid."

* * *

Despite the late hour, the Senate was indeed locking horns, insulting, flattering, compromising, and disagreeing as violently as ever.

Padmé Amidala Naberrie Skywalker, senior Senator of Naboo and prominent leader of the anti-war movement, tried surreptitiously to shake some life back into her left foot. This particular meeting had started five hours ago, and showed absolutely no hope of ending. Her throat burned with thirst, she would cheerily eat a whole bantha raw, and the fine golden wiring of her headdress had made her temples ache. Still, she had sat there the entire time, listening to the propositions, pleas, outright threats, and inventive invective flung back and forth by her fellows.

"No," said Bail Organa, his dark, handsome face flushed in rage. "No, no, no." The Senator from Alderaan slammed a fist on the edge of his box. "I will not condone that. I will never. Genophon is worse than brutality, it is utter perversity."

"Organa," said Senator Ephreon Zanor petulantly, "the Separatists have given us an insight into their methods. Perhaps they are not pleasant, but they are efficient. We are at war, and we must do it to them before they have a chance to do it to us. They might target Coruscant next!"

"No." Bail Organa refused to be sated. "Genophon is genocide, Zanor. The Separatists take unsuspecting planets by storm and gas the dissenters. Since when did we let them become the moral compass for our actions? I fear for the Republic if that is the case, and they will never target Coruscant, they would lose as many of their number as ours. That is nothing but petty fear-mongering."

Ephreon Zanor opened his mouth furiously, but Corellian Senator Garm Bel Iblis cut in. "Bail, I understand your reticence. Such a drastic measure must be weighed carefully. But Ephreon is right. The Separatists would do the same to us."

"_No." _Padmé's heart went out to Bail as he stood there, defiant and fuming, the lone dissenting voice in a sea of rivals. "It is barbarism. I refuse to kill innocent beings wholesale, no matter the cause their government has pledged to."

"You were always too softhearted, Bail," Ephreon Zanor said._ "They _kill innocent beings wholesale."

Bail slashed his hand down hard enough that the box trembled. "_We are not the Separatists, Ephreon! _If we sink to their level, what distinguishes us from them? Does it even _matter_, or are we two misbehaving children grubbing for power in the dust?"

Ephreon Zanor seemed taken aback by the Alderaanian Senator's fury. "Well, of course. We must save some face. I was just remarking that if we, perhaps, gave genophon a limited trial on one or two of the most stubborn holdouts... Jabiim, perhaps, or Muunilinst..."

He had named two of the most brutal, bitterly contested planets in the Clone Wars. Both were under excruciating sieges, and both were in the Outer Rim, a tenuous part of the galaxy to start with. The Separatists wanted Jabiim for its rich mineral deposits, and naturally the Republic had pledged to stop them – untold numbers of Jedi had died on its muddy plains. Muunilinst was a messy catalyst of underground rebels and munitions factories. Both sides had soaked it in blood.

"Even if you ignore the crimes against humanity, which I cannot," said Bail, "we have many of our own forces on both, Zanor. Would you sacrifice them, turn Jabiim and Muunilinst into wastelands?"

"I didn't mean the entire _planets, _Organa," said Ephreon, evidently peeved. "I just meant... certain strongholds."

"_No," _Bail snarled again. "I believe I have made myself very clear." He looked up, trying for a painful smile, a hint of reconciliation with the disgruntled crowd. "Honored delegates, I believe that the method of genophon is brutal and unnatural, and debases us to the level of our enemies. I cannot support it."

That was the last Padmé heard. If she sat here any longer she would collapse in her seat, and she had been here long enough that tongues would not wag if she left. Giving Bail an encouraging smile, she stepped out of the box and unobtrusively backed out of sight, trailed by her two handmaidens, Moteé and Ellé.

Once they were sequestered in the deserted corridors, Padmé let out a long, unsteady sigh. She ripped out the elaborate headdress, grimacing as it took several chunks of her hair with it. "Take it away, Ellé. I've inflicted quite enough damage on myself tonight."

"Yes, m'lady," said Ellé, bowing her head. These two handmaidens had been chosen specifically for their secrecy, loyalty, and resemblance to Padmé. They were both from her home planet of Naboo, and they were the only people in the universe to whom Padmé had confided the dark secret of her marriage. When she slipped away, on the infrequent occasions that she and Anakin could meet, either one of them would play the role of her, politely answering rote questions and deflecting nosier ones. Without them, she would never see her husband at all.

With Moteé and Ellé providing silent entourage, Padmé slipped back to her quarters, and winced as she slid out of the frothy, elaborate shiraya-silk confection that her tailors called a dress, thick with beading and jewels and gilded embroidery. Moteé's gentle touch unwound the last of the binding from her hair and let it tumble down her back, almost to her waist.

It was with relief that Padmé slid into a silken nightgown. She knew she should have stayed and supported Bail, but five hours of incessant bickering, achieving nothing, was enough to crack even her Senatorial composure.

"Will you be needing us for the night, m'lady?" said Ellé, turning back the covers on Padmé's bed.

"No, thank you." Padmé slipped beneath the soft sheets. "Good night."

* * *

Anakin tensed at once to see the fear on Palpatine's face. It was a good, honest, kind face, somewhat lined and cared from the trial of wartime, but still capable of smiling or scolding or even – he hated to think of it – scaring. "Tell me what's wrong, Chancellor. It's all right. You're safe here."

"Anakin, you know of course of Count Dooku." Palpatine traced an absentminded finger down Anakin's durasteel arm. "The one who maimed you, of course."

"I know him." Anakin's reply was a growl, low in his throat.

The briefest flick of satisfaction crossed Palpatine's face. "I thought you might. Listen to me, Anakin. It has been discovered that Asajj Ventress is his apprentice."

Fire shot through Anakin's blood. "That bastard? Where is he? He hurt Obi-Wan, and one day I'm going to kill him for that!"

Palpatine smiled thinly. "_Her, _Anakin. As Master Kenobi could attest, I do believe that Ventress is a woman."

Anakin frowned. He had never heard of a Sith _Lady _before; according to his own limited knowledge of the Dark Order, the Sith were proud, selfish, and fiercely misogynist. Only _Lords _had existed in their line, a line nearly as long as the Jedi.

"Is this too difficult a request, to kill a woman?" Palpatine asked, his features settling into their familiar fatherly concern. "You needn't worry, she's flagrantly corrupt...and as you mention, she _did _torture Master Kenobi. You see, Anakin, you are the Jedi I trust beyond all others. And it won't be necessary to track down Ventress' whereabouts. She is, as far as I know, currently on her way to Muunilinst."

Anakin scowled. "Muunilinst can be classified as its own war by now."

"I know." Palpatine's hands on Anakin's shoulders were promising, reassuring, comforting. "But you are _strong, _Anakin. Your skills, I hear, are unmatched."

"You've heard wrong, I'm sure," Anakin answered modestly. In truth, the compliment pleased him.

"And therefore," Palpatine continued, "I am asking you to accept this mission from me personally and fly to Muunilinst. I'm sure, with your superior ability, it shan't take long to find Ventress and eliminate her."

Anakin turned away. "No," he said abruptly. This was terrible, refusing a _perfect _opportunity to take revenge on Ventress, but... "With all due respect, you're the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, not of the Jedi. You don't have the authority to send me on a mission, and certainly not by myself."

"You don't need Obi-Wan any longer." Palpatine's voice was as warm and gentle as ever. "You're not a Padawan, and a full Knight without an apprentice may certainly be sent alone."

"It's not the Jedi way. We work together. And besides..." Anakin, at a loss for the first time all evening, struggled for words. "Obi-Wan is a part of me. I know him better than myself. I know how he'll fight in a battle, what he'll say when we're introduced to some planetary bureaucrat." He matched Palpatine's cunning smile. _"It is a pleasure. We greet you and accept your gracious hospitality on behalf of all Jedi."_

"Very well, if it please you, we could send Master Kenobi along as well," Palpatine said indulgently. "He might welcome a chance to gain _his _revenge."

Anakin's scowl deepened. "He won't. That's not like him, and besides, the Council gave him a seat a few months ago." He hoped his anger did not show in his voice. When they had announced it... it was hard to explain. On one hand, he wished Obi-Wan the best – the man who was dearer to him than a father. On the other hand, he had been terribly, passionately jealous, and it had frightened him.

"Well, Kenobi and Skywalker are an unbreakable team," said Palpatine. "We must keep to appearances, after all."

"Master Obi-Wan will never agree."

"_Will _he?" Palpatine rejoined mildly. "And do remember, Anakin, he is your Master no longer, merely a friend."

"A partner. He's – " Anakin gave up. He could never explain his love for Obi-Wan to Palpatine, no more than he could explain his love for Palpatine to Obi-Wan.

"I will send someone to speak to the Council. They must agree that an unleashed Sith, even an untrained one, is a very great threat," said Palpatine amicably. "Trust me, if their graces decide, in their wisdom, that this mission should not be pursued, then I must comply."

He turned back to Anakin, his face hurt and vulnerable. "Still, think about it. Muunilinst is very volatile. The presence of a dark-sider could cause it to swing the wrong way, with likely disastrous results. Could we have that?"

Anakin swallowed to wet his throat. "No," he allowed.

"And after all this, it comes down to one thing." Palpatine looked up to meet his gaze earnestly, openly. "I am not asking you as a Jedi. I am asking you as a friend."

Anakin had a choice to make, and he made it. "I will not let you down."

Palpatine let out a long breath of relief, as if the very fate of the universe had hinged on Anakin's compliance. The fear and anxiety smoothed off his face, and his tender, caring smile once again fixed on Anakin. "My dear boy."

* * *

It was hard to leave him after that, having just pledged to do his will no matter what the Council's official verdict was, but Anakin managed. He bid the Chancellor a courteous good night, wished him pleasant dreams – knowing all too well the power of bad ones – and left. As if in a trance, he navigated the corridors, tracing a path more from instinct then memory. He passed doors as if they did not exist, as if the entire world was nothing more than a figment of imagination in the Maker's mind.

Anakin at last drew to a halt before the last door in a long corridor. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and raised a hand to knock, but before he could, it opened.

"Come in," said either Moteé or Ellé – he could never tell which one. Padmé insisted they weren't twins, but they might have been to Anakin. "It's not seemly to be seen lingering outside a Senator's quarters."

Anakin stepped inside and Moteé/Ellé shut the door behind him. "M'lady has retired," she announced. "May C-3PO get you something?"

Right on cue, the gleaming gold protocol droid toddled out from behind an ornate tapestry. "Oh, Master Anakin! Such a pleasure! I haven't seen you in – "

Anakin, glaring fiercely, made a chopping motion with his hand. Even Threepio, not the most perceptive of droids, couldn't mistake it. Obediently, he stopped, then continued in a stage whisper. "The Senator is in her bedroom."

Anakin thanked him cursorily, and pushed past both handmaidens and Threepio. Quiet as a stealth droid, he sneaked down the hallway outside her room, hit the door release, and stepped inside.

Padmé sat up at once, looking around sharply. "Moteé, is that you?"

"Not likely." Anakin stepped into the slice of light spilling through her blinds.

Padmé drew in a disbelieving breath. "_Anakin!" _She flew to him, throwing her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his sandy curls to bring his mouth to hers. Their kiss was hard and sweet, borne from deep loneliness and a deeper passion.

Padmé pulled back to breathe. "It's been too long," she whispered, "the war's kept us away, but it's all right, Annie, you're here, _here_." She leaned up to kiss him again.

Anakin decided that telling her about his mission to Muunilinst could wait. In between kisses, he asked, "Have you – scrambled the – cameras?"

"Of course." Padmé, serious worried Senator Amidala, giggled like a girl. "Can you _imagine _Threepio's shock?"

Anakin imitated the protocol droid's high-pitched, fussy voice. "Oh dear me! I do believe that Master Anakin and Mistress Padmé are – _mmmph – _"

"And then – Moteé/Ellé – tackles him," he explained, breathless.

"Anakin." Padmé kissed him again, kissed him as if she couldn't stop. "Don't leave. Please don't leave me. We've never had long enough."

"I won't leave you." Anakin lifted her up, kicked off his boots. Then he carried her back to the bed, her small legs wrapped around his waist, his fingers entwined in her soft mahogany curls.

* * *

There is a vergence in the Force, and it is growing stronger. On one side, the light is brilliant, diffusing sheets of warmth and energy, of selflessness and peace. But on the other, it is dark and tormented, fear and anger distorting it into something unrecognizable. The light has been broken, reduced to nothing, and scattered shards poison the blackness. There is normally an unbreakable chasm between these two extremes, but they are growing closer.

Anakin Skywalker is the Chosen One. Everyone believes it, it's accepted as uncontestable fact. And because of this, even when things seem bleakest, there is always that to fall back on for comfort. _We can't lose. We have the Chosen One._

Anakin is making another choice, one that he's not even aware of. He's buried in the warmth and tenderness that he so desperately desires, the pure and unconditional love that only his wife can offer him. Not Obi-Wan, not Palpatine, just Padmé, in their infrequent and forbidden trysts.

In the Force, it is uneasy. Sheets of light are sliced by shards of blackness. The sides are no longer so distinct; they blur and jumble. And then they go churning down the threads into the young man that they gave life to, and spill out into Padmé.

Two brilliant sparks sprout in the great, troubled realm that is the Force.

Nobody senses them. Not even their father.

* * *

Anakin did not leave that night. The Temple could wait, all of it could wait. He would attend to it when he pleased. Curled around Padmé, he slept deeply and dreamlessly, with no memories of pain, no shadowy visions. He slept as he had not in some time. No decisions or questions of loyalty plagued him – he was free, for a short time, to find the simple, peaceable side of life that he had so long craved.

Neither of them knew how complex things were about to become.


	10. Manipulations

**CHAPTER TEN**

**Manipulations**

Obi-Wan could not sleep.

He lay staring at the revolving circus of lights diagramming themselves on the ceiling, the quilts tucked around his shoulders. Perhaps it was the sheer fact of sleeping in bed in the Temple, and not underneath a rock on a cold, distant planet, but he could not get comfortable. Soon enough, he, and presumably Anakin as well, would be back on the front lines. He should savor it while he could.

There was a strange disturbance in the Force. But then, that had become almost a routine occurrence. It had grown different, distant, not the unsullied flow that it had been only a few years ago. Perhaps it was because of the war. The living Force struggled greatly in the presence of so much death and chaos. If the old prophecy was true, his apprentice – _former _apprentice, Obi-Wan reminded himself – was the only one who could soothe it.

Obi-Wan focused on his breathing, calming his racing mind. The Temple was quiet, all Masters and Knights and Padawans either sleeping or meditating. If Obi-Wan stilled his thoughts and let himself dissipate out through the Force, he could feel the peace of the silent spires, the twilight flooding the halls, and the gentle current of life, binding them together – but in a warped way, like twisted, splintering glass.

Obi-Wan decided he would see if Anakin wanted to talk. His former Padawan insisted that he worked the best at night, and often did not retire at all, as if he could go days without sleep. Obi-Wan wondered if it was the dreams that Anakin feared, and frowned. A Jedi had the ability, or should, to school his mind and sleep without dreaming; nightmares were a symbol of fear and uncertainty. He would talk to Anakin about it.

Leaving bed behind, the older Jedi padded down the hallway to Anakin's room, which stood adjacent to his. Keying in the unlocking code, which Anakin had shared with no one save him, Obi-Wan stepped through into the cool, dark chamber, and immediately had to swat away about a dozen of Anakin's machines that had come whirring over to examine the intruder.

The quarters were sparse and neat. A miniature holoprojector rested on the desk, spouting fragments of blue static. The lone window was veiled in a blind, all of his projects and records had been stacked tidily in a corner, and there was only one problem, although it was a significant one. Anakin wasn't there.

Obi-Wan frowned. Anakin had never really preferred the company of others, and he hated to work in the archives. Perhaps he wasn't back yet from his meeting with the Chancellor. Still...if something was grave and complex enough to take up over three hours, Anakin would have likely been in touch to tell him.

There was an easy way to find out. Obi-Wan went to Anakin's heavily modified communications bank, and clicked in his partner's frequency. There was a hum as the signal traversed, and a bluish glow rose out of the comm platform like translucent gas. This, too, contained a problem: there was no Anakin visible in its field.

"Anakin," said Obi-Wan, half-anxious, half-annoyed. "All I want is an estimate of when you'll return to the Temple. Please contact me to – "

He was about to say _do so _when the transmission fizzled, and Anakin dove into sight, materializing as a small, glowing ghost. Obi-Wan noted that he seemed to be shirtless, but he quickly pulled his Jedi robe over his shoulders. "Hello, Master."

Obi-Wan noticed his use of the title. "Hello, Anakin. Where are you?"

"Five Hundred Republica," Anakin answered promptly.

"Have you finished the business with the Chancellor?"

"Yes, Master." For some reason, Anakin was frowning, pulling the robe tighter, and he wasn't meeting Obi-Wan's eyes. "He had an... unusual request."

"What sort of unusual request?" Obi-Wan asked, keeping his tone neutral. Anakin was liable to take offense at any slight, real or perceived, on the Chancellor.

"It was – " Anakin's frown deepened. "He wanted to send me on a mission."

Obi-Wan's voice cracked like a whip. "_That _has never been, and will never be, under his authority."

"I told him that," Anakin said, sounding somewhat helpless. His arms threaded down the sleeves of the robe, quickly sorting out which fitted in which hole, and he drew it closed over his chest. "He – "

For a long moment, Anakin looked stricken, silent, then he finally spoke again. "He asked me as a friend, Master. Obi-Wan."

"Friend or no, I dislike the Chancellor overreaching himself like this," Obi-Wan replied crisply. "Tell me what this mission is, and I shall relate it to the Council."

"He said he'd submit to their authority," said Anakin. He still wasn't meeting Obi-Wan's eyes.

"Anakin, do you really think so? He's playing on your affection and loyalty, and if he wants it done, I have no doubt that either he or his fawning cohorts will find a way to _get _it done without your – "

Anakin's temper sparked to life, hot and sudden as a magma flare. "So, you're the only mentor I can trust?" he snapped. "I knew you'd do this, lecture about how the Chancellor is really making some underhanded power grab, and I'm just a tool in – "

"Anakin, I'm not asking you to – "

"It's something we may be _both _interested in," said Anakin, biting off the words as if they tasted bad. "Count Dooku's taken an apprentice."

_That _hit Obi-Wan in the face like a slap. "Where? Who?

Anakin smiled grimly. "You know her. Asajj Ventress."

Obi-Wan recoiled. The weeks he had spent in her custody had been among the most unpleasant of his life. "She's his _apprentice? _But how in the – "

" – world does the Chancellor know this?" Anakin finished, as seamlessly as if he'd been the one speaking all along. "Master, he's the leader of the _civilized _world. It's his business to keep up with the dealings of his greatest political rival."

"I suppose," Obi-Wan allowed. "Ventress... if it's a lure, it's subtly done..."

Just then, a voice – so faint that Obi-Wan thought, until much, much later, that he had imagined it: _"Annie? Who're you talking to?"_

"Excuse me," said Anakin, and dove out of sight again. Obi-Wan watched the glowing, empty field for what felt like some time, until at last Anakin reappeared.

"What was that?"

"Security forces," said Anakin. "They wanted to ascertain my clearance."

Obi-Wan, since he knew he wouldn't get anything better, let it slide. "Very well. This is a very serious issue, Anakin. Rest assured that I will speak about it with the Council. If what the Chancellor says is true, I am sure they will dispatch a team."

Anakin grinned at him, and quick as that, he was the Anakin he had always been, a rogue, but a charming one. It was hard not to forgive him, but Obi-Wan was still upset, and needed to mull this new and disturbing information.

He reached to terminate the communication, then said, "One more thing. Where has Ventress gone?"

"That's the best part." A teasing glimmer danced in Anakin's eyes. "Muunilinst."

Obi-Wan struggled not to groan. _"Wonderful." _

They had been to Muunilinst once before. Massive droid factions had been deployed against them, and Obi-Wan had been forced into single combat against the most potent Jedi-killer in centuries, the bounty hunter Durge. Almost as a given, in Anakin's mind, he had won. Still, nothing had changed.

"Master," Anakin said, "why is it that I have a feeling we'll be the ones sent off?"

Obi-Wan glowered at him, not as angry as he might have been, but answered seriously. "Because the Council trusts us, as a team, beyond most everyone else. Because that the battle against a Sith apprentice is one we cannot afford to lose, not with the Jedi and the Republic so fragile already."

"I know," Anakin said, his voice a husky murmur.

"If you've finished," said Obi-Wan, "please return to the Temple. I trust you have no other business?"

"No, Master. None at all." Anakin looked at him soulfully, trustingly, his blue eyes hiding nothing, apparently a mirror into his complex and guileful soul. He seemed to shine as clear as a star-beacon. Obi-Wan knew at once that he was being lied to.

"Very well," said Obi-Wan again, more discomfited and bewildered than ever. "I will see you shortly, I expect."

"Of course, Master," said Anakin, still sticking, perplexingly, to the honorific. "I try. I love you, you know."

A pause. "That is against the Code," said Obi-Wan, then punched the power button. The blue glow phased out of existence, leaving the room silent and dark.

He regretted his words at once, knowing that what Anakin had said was the truth, as it had been for almost every Master and Padawan in history, but it was not spoken of in the Order. He knew that Anakin was saying it now in an attempt to placate him, lull him, put him off his guard, and this angered him. And although he returned to bed and lay awake for what felt like hours, trying to make some sense, any sense of their interchange, he never heard Anakin come in.

* * *

Muunilinst was a bloodbath of a planet, red and weeping even from space, rattling along its prescribed cosmic path and leaving chaos in its wake. The surface was scraped raw by paralyzing winds and drenched with torrential rains, echoing constantly with the tumult of war. The sky was choked with clouds, and the falling fire-trails of ruined starfighters. The dazzling javelins of laser bolts danced back and forth, dyeing the nights red-green. Muunilinst had once been a very beautiful planet, with gleaming cities and cultivated parks, but only blasted ruins remained.

The ground was scarred with land mines, chopped up from clone and droid feet, the air reeking of caustic chemicals. Its four moons all had Republic garrisons built on them, but the atmosphere was thin enough that only droids could survive for any length of time. One by one, the moons had crumbled to the Separatist forces, and the weapons factories, the source of all Muunilinst's woe, were perhaps the most dangerous of all. Not only could a careless spark ignite a detonator, the odds were very great that you would be shot by a sentry, whether on your side or the other.

The planet's lone Senator, Dashum Zengrist, had been assassinated – nobody was sure by whom. His replacement had carefully held off on declaring allegiance to either the Republic or the Separatists – even though Muunilinst was the headquarters of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, which had thrown in very publicly on the Separatist side. Isolationist rebel groups complicated matters. Here, as everywhere, the Clone Wars marched brutally on.

A lone starfighter, swathed in stealth shields, flew low over the inhospitable landscape. All its running lights were dark, its angular wings striped with blades sharp enough to cut, and they proved to be able to do so, when a lumbering troop transport took off directly in its path.

The pilot never saw the starfighter. The starfighter never slowed. In a blaze of burning metal and the roar of shattering components, it sliced through the aft quarters and shot onwards. Gravely crippled, trailing smoke and flame, the barge crashed to the ground. Clone troopers tumbled from the ruins and lay still.

The starfighter veered hard right, then flew onwards into a dense pillar of exhaust steam. In here, shielded from almost all eyes, it turned and sank to a landing platform big enough for only one ship. When the fighter came to a halt, the blades ceased their frenetic churning; there was a hiss and a creak as the craft settled down. Durasteel landing claws gripped the platform, and the cockpit canopy rose.

A graceful form in a black cloak slipped free. Without a sound, the hunter dropped to the platform, peering out from beneath the deep hood.

A sharp, distinctly unpleasant scent forced a slight cough out. White hands, sheathed in fingerless black gloves, fluttered to an unseen mouth, and then the hunter began to walk, with deadly speed and purpose. In seconds, the landing platform was empty except for a retinue of maintenance droids that scuttled out to see to the starfighter.

* * *

The master was furious.

His apprentice had taken an apprentice of his _own _without his consent. Such explicit disobedience made his wrath cold and deadly, fast and merciless as a snake. Lord Tyranus had to learn his place.

Darth Sidious stalked back and forth, pacing and pondering, wondering whether to kill Ventress. Either way, she and her upstart "Master" required a sharp lesson. There could only be one leader while Sidious lived, and it was not Tyranus.

Darth Bane had laid down the rules of the Sith, and while Sidious was constantly shattering those that irked him, Sith or otherwise, there were some that he had kept with excruciating fidelity. The Rule of Two, for a start. There could never be an entire Sith Order to combat the Jedi; there would only ever be two Sith at a time, master and apprentice. _He _was the Master, not Tyranus.

Tyranus would never be. He would die first, but he had his uses, and not least his intimate, firsthand knowledge of the Jedi. Every trap he had planned for them had worked flawlessly, especially the brilliant Geonosis ruse – Sidious still had to admire that little stunt. Tyranus' cunning coordination had rid them of half the Order's best bladesbeings at a blow.

Ventress was an unwanted third, a blatant defiance of his wishes, of ancient Sith tradition. Sidious whirled on his heel. She must die, now, while she was an apprentice and not a true Sith. Sidious must have made the mistake of letting it slip how greatly he valued Tyranus' assistance – well, for the time being. Now he was getting ideas above his station, presuming to be a "Master," to take an apprentice of his own, to proclaim himself a full-fledged Dark Lord.

Sidious stopped and poured himself a drink. He tossed back the bitter Ithorian aperitif at a pull, wiped his mouth delicately, and set the glass down. For all his guile, Tyranus looked like a raw novice when set beside Anakin Skywalker. Skywalker was much younger, _far _more powerful, infinitely more skilled, and so... _malleable._

It gave Sidious a searing, ecstatic thrill to be so daintily coaxing the Order's poster boy to his side, right beneath their noses. It was intoxicating, but dangerous. If the boy ever learned how he was being manipulated, before he was completely indoctrinated, he may well decide to end Sidious himself. That was the ever-present danger.

Sidious wondered idly who the "other" was, the one that Skywalker had been so desperate to visit, but he had read the desire clear enough in Anakin's eyes. He thought that he knew perfectly well, as Anakin's infatuation with Padmé Amidala had never been a secret. Not to him, anyway.

Another circuit of the office, another drink. Sidious intended to keep this up until he found an answer or until he fell down drunk, whichever came first. As alcohol had never affected him in the slightest, it looked as if it would have to be the answer.

In the end, he decided, he would be perfectly agreeable to Kenobi accompanying Skywalker. Muunilinst was a highly dangerous planet, after all. Perhaps the problematic Jedi Master could finally, _finally _be disposed of, and Skywalker could embrace his true potential at last. The ideal scenario was that Kenobi and Ventress would end up killing each other, leaving Skywalker free to go berserk as scheduled.

It was easy. It was so easy that Sidious almost laughed aloud. He moved the pieces where he wanted. The Jedi, always, naively willing to believe the best of people, had accepted his stories well enough. Now, just as they had grown suspicious, his plans were magnetically sealed. It was almost enough to tempt him to relax.

Sidious shunned this novel concept. He had not worked for years to climb the ladder, make influential friends, push his ideology, and gain control in order to let it fall. _A__lmost _was nowhere near as good as _absolute. _Which reminded him... He turned to his desk and unearthed a high-tech datapad. He powered it on, paused for a moment to think, then titled it, _**Mergence of Powers Act, Sect. 1550.**_

Anakin was quite right about one thing. He did _not _control the Council. It was time to rectify that. Of course, he would never be seen advocating this – that would not do. However, he could just... slip...it, light-fingered, to one of his friends.

A small, satisfied smile curled Sidious' thin lips as he wrote.

_This Act hereby proposes that the dual GALACTIC REPUBLIC powers: the office of the Supreme Chancellor (henceforth abbreviated as SC) and the Jedi Council (henceforth abbreviated as JC) agree to consolidate into a single representative voice, to therefore better convey the wishes of the Republic to the galaxy..._

_He _was the galaxy. These were _his _wishes. The Jedi had nothing to do with it, and this merge was to ensure that they could not interfere. He could trap them in a web of broken clauses and legal breaches before they could blink – in a way, he almost felt sorry for them. However, twenty-five thousand years of their history could not shatter without thembeing destroyed. And they would be. Utterly. They would find, all of them, that he was very good at betraying allies.


	11. Decisions

**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

**Decisions**

Early morning on Coruscant. The horizon was a faint, gauzy pink, and the last stars were winking out, erased by the beacons of air taxis and signaling towers, as the last illicit lovers slipped from high-ranking bedrooms and the final touches were put on respectable faces. High in the central tower of the Temple, however, the Council was already in session and had been so for hours.

"I don't like this," said Mace Windu bluntly. "I can certainly understand the Chancellor's unease if there's a Sith apprentice running around, but to presume to _order _Skywalker to chase her..." He shook his head, the morning glow reflecting on his gleaming dark skull. "And this just a few weeks after the so-called Security Act..."

"Disturbing, indeed," Yoda agreed. It was a running point of curiosity in the Temple as to whether the ancient Master ever slept, or only refreshed himself with meditation and time spent listening to the Force.

"The Chancellor is right on one account," the life-sized holopresence of Ki-Adi-Mundi agreed. The only Knight, rather than Master, to sit on the Council, the Cerean Jedi was currently far away on Mygeeto, another of the Outer Rim Sieges, and had not attended a Council meeting in the flesh for over a standard month. "A Sith apprentice is a grave threat."

"He asked Anakin as a friend," Obi-Wan put in tiredly, rubbing his beard. His long, sleepless night spent worrying was making itself felt.

"Friend or no, Anakin's deployment isn't under his jurisdiction," said Saesee Tiin, voice sharp as breaking glass. "It seems often as if young Skywalker values the Chancellor's guidance over that of the Jedi. I would not advise sending him. He's too dangerous."

"Anakin, or the Chancellor?" Agen Kolar asked musingly. An Iridonian Zabrak, he had plaits of rough dark hair and short vestigial horns, his eyes yellow in the smooth honey-colored skin of his face. Although Kolar was a celebrated Master and a good friend, Obi-Wan was reminded, every time that he looked at him, that it had been a Zabrak that had killed Qui-Gon. This was unseemly in a Jedi, and he had managed to place it deep in his subconscious where it did not trouble him, much.

"Both," Saesee Tiin insisted. "Anakin may be the Chosen One, but he has always been the most dangerous and unpredictable one, as well. This mission will bring him too close to the dark side. I do not think it wise."

Although Obi-Wan had often thought the exact same thing, he did not wish to sit here and listen to his former Padawan being abused. "Master Tiin, the dark side is nothing new to the Jedi now. We must all face it, in the war and in ourselves."

"Correct, Master Obi-Wan is," Yoda pronounced. "Still, a point Master Tiin may have. Young Skywalker... dangerous is he. Uncertain is his future."

"He _is _the Chosen One," Obi-Wan insisted, almost smiling at the irony. A long time ago, it would have been Qui-Gon in his place, and him opposing Anakin in Saesee's stead. Things had changed, as he could not forget. "The Force itself gave life to him."

"Yes, but for what purpose?" Mace asked cuttingly.

That stymied Obi-Wan. "Qui-Gon believed that he would balance the Force," he said at last, carefully. "And with it the way it is now, there is clear need for him."

"Master Jinn is dead twelve years now," said Mace. "And the prophecy of the Chosen One is old and cryptic, locked in the archives, hidden in an ancient holocron. It is simple enough that it is easy to misinterpret."

"Mace, you cannot think that – "

"_Masters_!" Ki-Adi-Mundi broke in. "We were speaking of Ventress."

"Ventress, yes," said Mace reluctantly. "If there's something the Sith want of us on Muunilinst, they've trapped us neatly enough. They know that we will not risk letting a dark-side spark ignite that deathtrap of a planet."

"Very dangerous, it would be," Yoda agreed, the ends of his long ears curling. "Weapons, and hatred, these things Muunilinst has much of. Let it slip to Separatist hands, we cannot."

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Obi-Wan said, "Does that mean we've decided?"

Mace sighed. "I know it feels as if we're playing directly into the Chancellor's hands, but it doesn't seem as if we have much of a choice, and it troubles me. If this is a manipulation, it is skillfully done. It would appear to be our own choice – he knows that we would choose to go after Ventress, _assuming _that she's even there – "

Stunned, Obi-Wan said, "Do you think the Chancellor would _falsify_ such a mission?"

"I do not know," Mace answered. "I must consider everything. The Order is beset by foes. This could be the idea of one of his cronies, hoping to get more Jedi out of the way. She nearly killed you last time. I will not risk this without proof."

Obi-Wan opened his mouth in disbelief, but Yoda spoke first. "Master Windu, understand your caution, I do. Too many traps have the Jedi walked into. Too many, killed they have been. All this, we know. And send a team to Muunilinst, we will."

Mace bowed his head. "I stand corrected, Master."

"As to who, the question remains," said Yoda.

"Masters, I suggest a great swordsman – Mace or Kolar, perhaps," Ki-Adi-Mundi put in. "Ventress is a dangerous foe with a lightsaber."

"Yes, but fighting Muunilinst has seen much of, too much," said Yoda musingly. "Another Jedi perhaps might suit better."

"And who might this be?" Obi-Wan asked, bemused.

Yoda, in answer, only looked at him.

"No – you must be mistaken," said Obi-Wan. In truth, he had been expecting another assignment any day – the great General Kenobi was scarcely far from the field – but not one of such..._gravity. _"You honor me, Masters, but last time she overwhelmed me."

"Last time she used trickery and sprang on you when you were already weakened," graceful, red-skinned Shaak Ti added. "At full strength, you will be a match for her. Your resolve is clear, your body is healed. You have never failed us before."

"And who then am I supposed to take on this mission?" Obi-Wan asked, throat dry. "As it please the Council?"

"You are one of us, you need not ask our leave," Mace reminded him. "Your choice of partner is, as always, up to you."

"I will accompany you if you wish, Master Kenobi," said Agen Kolar.

"As will I," Kit Fisto seconded.

Obi-Wan looked at them. He would be honored to count either of them at his side, but... "I thank you for your offers," he said, "and I wish I could accept them. Still, there is another Jedi I would feel more comfortable with."

"You must do as suits you," Mace Windu said.

Obi-Wan smiled, at last. "Thank you. And the only man I want at my side for a mission like this is Anakin."

A sudden silence fell. Obi-Wan noticed his fellow Masters exchanging uneasy glances, then Shaak Ti spoke. "Your bond is commendable, but... the situation on Muunilinst is very volatile. Skywalker is talented, undoubtedly, but..."

"He is your Padawan no longer," Ki-Adi-Mundi added.

"Yes, Masters, I know." Obi-Wan struggled to keep the faint bite of irritation out of his voice. "Still, we complement each other... we know each other, we are a team. And Anakin will take offense if he is left behind, when it was the Chancellor that asked him to go there in the first place."

"A poor reason to include him," Saesee Tiin observed.

"I cannot leave him, Master. I – I know his mind, and I can control his temper..."

"As you controlled it on Geonosis?" Mace Windu interjected.

"Master, Anakin has learned from that mistake," Obi-Wan said, stung. "He is not the same reckless boy he was. Sometimes I do not know what he has become...but it is not that. I mean no offense, but he is my choice."

Mace and Yoda shared an unreadable stare. "As you wish," Mace acceded at last. "Skywalker will be your partner, then."

* * *

Later, Obi-Wan hurried down from the Council chambers, thinking intently. This mission meant that he was likely to be cloistered in the Outer Rim for some time, helping to organize the chaos of conflicting sieges – more precisely, the never-ending battle for Muunilinst. It was a life Obi-Wan had grown used to – fighting, flying, leading troops, sketching out and scraping out victories. He did not particularly enjoy it, but there it was, the life of a Jedi in war, and the life of a Jedi, with or without the war, was the path that he had chosen.

He sighed and turned his steps toward Anakin's quarters, wondering if he had returned yet, and what he would do if he wasn't. As it turned out, his fears were needless. As Obi-Wan turned the corner, Anakin came barreling out of nowhere and only barely avoided crashing into him.

"Master!" said Anakin, burning to a halt.

"Anakin. I see you've returned from your nocturnal prowling."

Anakin had the grace to blush. "Sorry, Master. Have you spoken to the Council about Ventress? The Chancellor was very worried," he added. "Mas – Obi-Wan – I don't care what the Council says, we need to go to Muunilinst and – "

"Patience." Obi-Wan put his hands on Anakin's shoulders. "Think. The Council has agreed to send me to Muunilinst, so you needn't worry about the authoriza – "

Anakin looked crushed and furious. "_You? _And without me? The Chancellor _asked _me in the first place, they can't – "

"_Anakin," _Obi-Wan said. "You didn't let me finish. Perhaps I should have said, the Council has agreed to send both of us."

That brought Anakin up short. "...Oh. Sorry. All right." In an instant, the rage on his face was gone, and he was agreeable and smiling again. Falling into step beside Obi-Wan, he said, "Well, the dream team remains together. I wouldn't have it any other way." His voice was tender, teasing, sincere.

Obi-Wan wondered if Anakin forgot that he was a Padawan no longer, or if he granted him the title from their deep and abiding respect and love. He smiled. "The Force knows you would have brought down the heavens if they split us up."

Anakin didn't return the smile. "Yes, I might have."

They turned a corner into a broader avenue through the Temple, vast and airy, supported by columns that vaguely resembled lightsabers. "And still," Anakin went on, "they had to send me. I was the one who brought it to their attention." He seemed desperately hopeful.

"Yes, Anakin." Walking side by side, they navigated the gentle curves of the corridor, which twisted back and opened into a wide, high-ceilinged chamber. Slashes of sunlight cast the silhouettes of passing Jedi as shadows on the tiled floor. "Still," Obi-Wan continued, "you must know that the Council holds some doubts."

Anakin frowned. "Why?"

Obi-Wan sighed. Honesty was always the best policy, but with Anakin, it could often be a touchy subject. "They...are concerned about the Chancellor's knowledge of the affair," he settled finally. "It seems odd that he should have access to it before even the Jedi heard."

Anakin scowled. "Let's not go through this again, Master. It was good of him to tell us so promptly."

"Yes, it was, and that worries me," Obi-Wan answered. "We don't know enough of the matter, but he does know that if there is a Sith apprentice on the prowl, the Jedi will take any risk to track them down. Muunilinst is a very dangerous planet."

Anakin glared at him. "You are _not_ accusing the Chancellor of trying to kill us."

"I'm only saying we don't have the entire story, Anakin," said Obi-Wan, trying to defuse him. "All we know of it is what the Chancellor has hand-fed us."

"You don't trust Palpatine," said Anakin. All the warmth in his tone had fled, replaced by a chilly, distant courtesy. "He is a good man. He works _with _the Jedi, remember? We are his elite strike team. He has to be honest."

"Anakin, the Jedi are _nobody's _elite strike team!" said Obi-Wan, more disturbed than ever. "We are our own entity, and we have existed much longer than he. He may work with us, but he can never presume to _command _us."

Anakin stared at him in frosty condemnation. As if explaining to a youngling, he said, "We are at war. The Jedi are pledged to serve the Republic. Chancellor Palpatine is the head of the Republic. Therefore, he has the authority to send us on missions."

Obi-Wan shook his head in disapproval. "The Jedi are not his personal firing squad," he murmured. "And I dislike his attempting to try."

"Then we have nothing to say for the moment, Master," said Anakin. His tone was icy and aloof, and in a way, worse than if he had raged. "I will speak to you later, when weleave for Muunilinst. _Soon."_

He turned his back and walked away. Obi-Wan, as he watched him go, could only mutter, "Well,_ that _did not go well."

Obi-Wan decided to keep quiet the news that he and Anakin had quarreled. For one thing, it was no one's business save theirs, and if the Council heard of it, they would try to reassign his partner to someone less tempestuous, more controllable. In a dark corner of his mind, Obi-Wan wondered if they would be right to do so, and grimly concluded that they probably would.

Still, though. As much as he admired Shaak Ti's calm, Agen Kolar's skills, Mace Windu's sheer presence, there was only one Jedi, flaws and all, that he wanted. He and Anakin were closer than friends, knew each other more intimately than brothers, could literally read each other's minds, and were utterly unstoppable in a fight.

Still, as much as _Kenobi and Skywalker _were admired by the public, the Council had tried to finesse the issue. After Geonosis, and the way Anakin's control had completely deserted him, they had tried to avoid giving him missions in which that situation might arise again. Obi-Wan knew that they had a healthy respect for his former Padawan's power – as did all the Jedi – but they feared that black rage.

The time for rest had ended. The Clone Wars certainly hadn't. It was time to return to the front lines, and if they died there, then so be it. A true Jedi did not fear death, but embraced it as a part of life, and rejoiced for those who were taken into the Force. Even grief was an attachment, and attachment clouded judgment. He had learned these words by heart ever since he was old enough to talk.

Obi-Wan hurried in the direction of his quarters. He had some things to pack, and preparations to make, and he doubted he had much time left to do so. He expected to be dispatched before nightfall.

* * *

The Coruscanti sunset cut bloody ribbons into the horizon, and the shadows were long and deep as two Jedi took their leave on the Temple's hidden platform. They were seen off by a small honor guard of Masters – Yoda, Mace Windu, Shaak Ti, and Agen Kolar. Obi-Wan and Anakin were dressed alike, in simple tunics, high boots, and plain brown robes, utility belts, and lightsabers. Two Delta-7 starfighters, an upgrade from the 6-line, hung at the edge of the platform.

R4-P17 had been loaded into the astromech socket of Obi-Wan's wing, and R2-D2 into Anakin's – he flatly refused to use any other droid. The six Jedi stood close together, speaking in soft voices. Yoda's hoverchair brought him to the level of the five others.

"Good luck," said Mace. "Go well."

"Contact us when you reach Muunilinst, when you are safe," said Shaak Ti.

"We await your success," said Agen Kolar.

Yoda sat with his eyes closed, as if searching through the Force, perhaps hoping for a flash of elusive insight. At length, he opened them, and gazed around at his fellows. "Difficult to catch, Ventress will be – in more ways than one. Stretch you it will, require terrible things...of both, I think." He paused. "Skywalker."

"Yes, Master?" said Anakin.

"Be mindful. A trap, this yet might be. School your feelings, you must_."_

Anakin bowed his head. "Yes, Master."

As Anakin and Yoda spoke, Mace turned to Obi-Wan. "I know that you are unsure about this, as Ventress managed to catch you last time. But you can call the clones should you need them. Your only task is to rid us of her. She is too dangerous."

Obi-Wan swallowed. "I understand, Master."

"In this way, although we obey the Chancellor's wishes, we retain some control," said Mace. "I know that Muunilinst is the most dangerous of all the Outer Rim Sieges, and I apologize. But that is why we are sending you. You have a gift for this."

Obi-Wan blinked.

"Yes," said Mace, and his stern, dark face almost relaxed into a smile. "You are the one we trust, Obi-Wan, and we will abide by your judgment. Even if we do not agree with your choice of Skywalker as partner, we trust _you _to have it work."

Obi-Wan blinked again, then nodded. "Yes, Master."

"You may say that." Mace Windu finally smiled, but almost immediately, was serious again. He grasped Obi-Wan's hand. "May the Force be with you."

"Yes, Master. And with you." Obi-Wan turned away at the same moment Anakin bowed to Yoda. As the last of the daylight began to fade, the two of them stepped into their starfighters, punched the cockpits down, and fired the sublights.

As the four Jedi Masters watched, the Deltas launched at the same moment, and drew matching trajectories away, almost close enough to scrape the other's paint. "I hope this wasn't a mistake," Mace said quietly, as the two starfighters melted into the twilight now shrouding the city. "I have the utmost faith in Kenobi, but Skywalker..."

"Trust you must have, that the boy will take the right path, even if uncertain his future is," Yoda answered. "And trust that handle Ventress, the two of them will."

Mace nodded. "Yes, Master," he said. "We must all learn to trust."

* * *

The twin starfighters streaked upwards, navigating a dangerous path between the frenzied streams of traffic. Their engines whined as their pilots pushed them, in tandem, straight up. After some precision flying, they broke free of the airlanes and soared into the darkening air trimming the tips of skyscrapers.

Here, weather drones regulated the climate precisely, and atmospheric scrubbers recycled the exhalations and wastes of billions of beings. Seen from above, Galactic City was a glittering, grimy jewel, sprawling away as far as the eye could see.

The faint pinpricks of stars began to grow visible as the starfighters continued to climb, pitching and banking in exact synchronization. Their running lights scored the darkness with brief, evanescent flashes, and orbital mirrors slashed reflected ribbons across triangular wings. Readout screens flashed, sentry shields were deactivated, and the starfighters shrieked into orbit. And then, all in a rush, they were free, and Coruscant was receding behind them.

Matching hyperdrive rings had been stationed just outside the planet's gravity well. The starfighters reached them at the same time. Their pilots entered identical coordinates into navicomputers, and watched with the same blend of excitement and dread as durasteel clamps fastened onto their wings and sent them reeling away into the extra-dimensional, illogical world of starfire that was hyperspace.


	12. Promises

**CHAPTER TWELVE**

**Promises**

Asajj Ventress had not found Muunilinst to her liking thus far.

The planet's ancient sun was bloated and red, spewing gamma-rays, and its light was chill, on the rare occasions that it struggled through the seemingly perpetual clouds choking the war-torn sky. Her ears rang with the constant reverberation of explosions, blaster bolts and turbolasers, and she could scarcely turn around without something dying at her feet. Still, her power grew stronger with every moment she spent on this hate-entrenched, fear-plagued planet.

At the moment, she stood alone inside an abandoned comm center, watching explosions smear and cartwheel across the sky outside. It was very troublesome. She was here, according to her Master, Darth Tyranus, to sow discord. But what she could do when Muunilinst was devouring itself from the inside?

Disjointed sonic booms periodically shook the floor, and a faint buzzing that could not be dislodged had taken up residence in her skull. Outside, clones and droids advanced and engaged and died and retreated, played out over and over as if on a stage. Asajj Ventress felt curiously disconnected from it all.

After a moment, she turned away, and began digging through the mess of sparking wire. Master Tyranus had given her a comlink, but as soon as she made planetfall, its encrypted channels had been irreparably scrambled.

Useless fuselage hissed and buzzed. Electrostatic currents boiled around Ventress' hands, but the shield of her power kept them away. She kept her head down, focusing intently, until she finally jammed two wires into the same overtaxed circuit board and managed to obtain a weak, but passable, signal. In a moment, the imposing silver-bearded face of Lord Tyranus swam before her eyes. Currents of distortion rippled through the image, making him seem barely human.

"Master." Ventress swallowed to wet her throat. "I've reached Muunilinst, and I am looking for places to...nudge things along, but there seems to be little I can do."

Darth Tyranus smiled. "My dear, there is little that needs doing now, aside from waiting. Your true task will come later. I have received word that the Jedi Council has dispatched two of their best and brightest to Muunilinst."

Ventress nodded. Inside her, though, there was a hot, stabbing fire of excitement. After this long, after all his promises, she would finally meet a Jedi blade-to-blade. She knew exactly _which _Jedi they would be. She had tortured one of them last time.

"That is when your role begins, Asajj." His smile widened, almost mocking, although he could have been sobbing and this wretched signal wouldn't have registered it. "Your role is to kill one of them. The clone troops will be... taken care of."

"Genophon," said Asajj.

"Exactly." His teeth gleamed. "It is necessary that we secure Muunilinst. Once we have control, we shall then use the weapons from the munitions factories to erase Republic strongholds on a number of key worlds. This, you see, is the catalyst to _everything. _And that is why you are assigned."

His praise made her glow. "Which Jedi do I kill, Master?"

He gazed at her, implacable. "You will know, Asajj," he said, and looked as if he might have said more, but her tenuous connection finally failed, and a small gout of flame flared up from the melted, glassy fuses.

Asajj cursed under her breath and sprayed it with a tiny gas cylinder from her sleeve, extinguishing it. Well, then. She had her orders: to wait. And wait she would, and try not to think, for whenever she retreated into her skull, she only ever found demons there, waiting.

* * *

Tyranus and Ventress had what could be termed an unconventional Sith relationship. The very nature of the dark side made master and apprentice scheming, secretive and venal, and more often than not, the apprentice killed the master and assumed the mantle for his own. Tyranus assured her that he would shortly do the same to his own Master, Darth Sidious, as Sidious had killed _his _master, Plagueis.

Treachery was the nature, and sometimes the very keystone, of the Sith. But Tyranus had taught her that that need not always be the case. The very reason the Sith were superior to the Jedi was that they allowed themselves to feel, to form attachments, to feel greed, love, sorrow, anger – to be _human. _Where the Jedi were a clan of dried-up ascetics and mediators, the Sith reveled in the entire spectrum. Their violent love, their passionate hate, and their desire to achieve more, rather than to be content, had fueled their meteoric, secret, and oft-challenged rise to power.

Ventress herself had once been a Jedi. But she had broken one of their most fundamental rules, and as a result, her brainwashing had been shattered, her values shaken to the core. She needed more, she needed _revenge_, and she had left. That was hardly an uncommon occurrence, and try as they might, no level of the Jedi hierarchy remained untouched. Even Depa Billaba, a Master who had once sat on the Council,had quit the Order and turned up later on the side of the Separatists, but fallen Jedi were not was proud of the fact that, one day, she would be the first Sith Lady in the entire history of the order.

Asajj had heard of Anakin Skywalker, of course. The boy, as yet a Jedi puppet, believed to have been conceived by the Force itself, powerful and ambitious and primed to fall. Once or twice, she had nursed an idle daydream that they might rule the galaxy together, a Sith duo of unbreakable, unshakable power. But she would not mind if it did not come to pass. She and Tyranus could do it just as well.

Asajj had been shattered, disillusioned, alone. Tyranus had saved her, told her of the other path. And so, she vowed, she would not be like the other Sith. She would not kill her Master. She and Tyranus, together, could even snuff out the stars.

And Skywalker proved to be belligerent to this undertaking – Asajj lifted one shoulder in a quick, dismissive shrug. Why, then. She could kill him. Kill both of the Jedi. A thin, macabre smile coiled her lips.

She might have to disobey Lord Tyranus. Just once.

A loose panel rattled behind her, breaking her reverie, and Asajj whirled, hand flashing to the lightsaber at her waist. There was something moving behind the ancient, heavily dented plasteel. If it had heard anything – seen anything –

A second later, a dirty, bedraggled, and extremely smelly young Muun man emerged into the room, followed by a train of sycophants. He saw her at once, and snapped out a small sidearm blaster pistol.

"Rep or Sep?" he demanded aggressively.

"Put that down, boy," said Ventress. "You don't know what you're dealing with."

She assumed that this was one of the rebel groups currently marching across Muunilinst, making matters even more complicated than they were to start with. The Muuns were a strangely pretty race in their way – humanoid, with black hair and dark skin, soft fur on hands and arms, arched eyes and long, pointed ears, each tufted with a delicate topknot. The boy moved like a panther, his golden gaze fixed on her. If he'd had a tail, it would have been lashing.

"You tell me or I shoot," said the boy, unyielding.

Asajj sighed. He required firm, swift, and fatal dealing. Before the boy could even prepare his weapon, she took two strides and ignited her lightsaber. Two brief slashes from the molten crimson blade, and the boy was tumbling at her feet, quite dead, mouth open in a vague look of surprise. Not wasting a second, his companions scrambled hastily back into the vents.

"Pathetic," Asajj informed their backs. It had been so easy as to take all the fun out of it. She stepped back and regarded the dead Muun boy, still steaming slightly from the blackened trenches seared through skull and chest.

She nudged him with her toe, just in case – but there was no way anyone could fake death from that. Leaving him there as the newest decoration to the otherwise nondescript comm center, she pulled her dark hood over her face and left.

* * *

There was someone on Coruscant who knew of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker's supposedly secret deployment, made all the more remarkable by the fact that this person was not a Jedi, and yet had been told in person by the latter. And this person did not like it in the slightest.

Padmé hated having to say goodbye to her husband, only scant hours after she had been able to see him for the first time in weeks. But the two of them had woken with first light, and Anakin had rolled over and told her that he would be leaving again. To Muunilinst, he said, and he didn't know for how long.

Anakin had not said it, not explicitly, but Padmé had heard the farewell in his voice. Muunilinst was a perilous, poisoned planet, shocked by the raging war, its dying sun and unstable system, and half of the clone troops assigned to it hadn't survived. If he met his fate there, he was telling her, he loved her. He always would.

She had wished that she could hide him in her quarters, smuggle him food, relate to him the most ludicrous antics from the Senate floor that day. She wished... but it was futile, she had known that when she married him. Having a normal life was utterly out of the question for Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala.

Anakin had left early. "Obi-Wan's already missed me," he explained, "and I want to clarify the details of the mission." Even without Council approval, he had seemed entirely certain of its necessity. "Wait for me."

"I always do," she had answered miserably, still tangled in the warm silken sheets, which smelled of love and sleep. "Anakin..."

"Wait for me," he insisted, shrugging into his tunic and boots, arranging his mussed hair, and clearly preparing a snappy answer for anyone who had the misfortune to ask why he was sneaking out of her quarters so early in the morning. "Trust me. I don't know how long it's going to be. It could be forever."

"Anakin, don't say that." She slipped out of the bed and padded softly to his side. "You _will _come back to me." She said it to convince herself as much as him.

He smiled at her, sweetly but so sadly, and traced her jaw with his finger. "Give any irritating Senators a kick from me. No, wait... that means all of them."

She tried to smile back, but just stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. His arms went around her back, warm and comforting, and in her mind, she made believe that there was no war, that they were back on Naboo. But Padmé had always been a practical woman, and the vision faded as soon as it had come.

She stepped back. This was the hardest part, the letting go. It never became any easier, but she kissed his fingers and pressed his hand to his chest. "Go," she said, keeping her smile in place with an effort. "_Go, _silly."

He went.

* * *

Padmé did not waste time moping over her husband's departure. There were bills to be reviewed (or written) agreements (forced and otherwise) to be reached, legislation to support (or vigorously deny) allies to meet, and alliances to forge.

Padmé was, before most everything, a politician. It was the only career she had ever known, and one that she was very, very good at. She had learned to greet everyone with the same polite smile that revealed nothing, and to speak in an inflectionless timbre, to treat everyone with the same nondescript courtesy. She was a figurehead more than a woman, an icon, a lightning tower.

She studied the sheet of flimsiplast Ellé had left beside her plate. Today: meeting with the Chandrilian Senator, Mon Mothma, a review of pending legislation, a final draft of the Anti-Military Funding and Taxation bill, and a whole corps of nosy Coruscanti gossip-mongers to meet. And this all before lunch. Despite her fear for Anakin, despite her uncertainty, Padmé smiled. This, for better or worse, was her life.

The door chimed, and Moteé leapt from her place on the velveteen settee to answer it. "M'lady," she called. "it's Senator Organa."

"Let him in." Padmé and Bail were close enough friends that she did not mind him seeing her in her nightgown and robe. She scrolled through files on her datapad as she absentmindedly nibbled at breakfast; this might have been any ordinary morning, following an excruciatingly ordinary night. She only hoped that Anakin and Bail had not crossed paths outside her door.

A second later, Moteé led in the Senator from Alderaan. Despite the early hour, he was already dressed, in crisp blue tunic and trousers, a woolen bandolier crossed over one broad shoulder and his dark hair immaculately arranged. "Senator Amidala," he said, inclining his head. "I'm sorry – is this too intrusive?"

"No, Senator Organa, that's all right. Sit down. Threepio, offer our guest something."

Threepio, always eager to please, trotted forward at once with a tray. Looking weary, Bail cast an eye over the selection before settling for a cup of juri juice. He drank half of it and wiped his mouth, then sighed, staring into it.

"Senator, is everything all right?" Padmé asked.

Bail heaved a great sigh. "You were working on that bill to cut funding for the Great Army of the Republic, were you not?"

"Yes, I was," Padmé agreed. Bail was another prominent member of the anti-war coalition; in fact, she had worked with him to develop this.

Bail took another gulp of juice and set the empty cup back on Threepio's proffered tray. "Don't bother," he said bitterly. "News broke this morning. A bill was just finalized that makes it a crime to take action against the troops – it's construed to be treason. It reached Palpatine's office, and he signed it into law minutes ago."

"But – " Padmé was shocked. "Without even being _debated_ in the _Senate_? The troops are all we hear anything about. Funding is being stripped from every corner, and thousands of programs are lacking in credits. He can't do that – "

"Apparently, he can." When Threepio wagged the tray insistently under his nose, Bail settled for another glass of juice. Padmé shot the protocol droid a pointed glare, and he immediately shuffled out of sight behind a pillar. Bail went on bitterly, "Palpatine's official reason for signing the bill was that since we are engaged in such a terrible, all-consuming, and brutal war, any attempt to undermine it must be seen as a sign of loyalty to the Separatists."

"That's not true at all!" Padmé could scarcely believe her ears. "I merely wanted some attention given to all the things we are neglecting – and something like this doesn't slice at our Constitution, it _gouges _it – "

"You try telling him that." Bail shrugged recklessly. "It's an airtight piece of legislation, though. Cut off any loopholes before they got started."

Padmé thought she saw tears lurking just beneath his ironclad professional façade. She slid her chair up next to his and offered him the comfort of a light hand on his shoulder.

"And that's not all they did," Bail continued, when she said nothing. "You remember the abhorrent practice of genophon, I have no doubt? Well...the Republic has authorized its use on several of the Outer Rim Sieges... Jabiim, Aargonar, and Muunilinst..." He shook his head. "My gods, what are we coming to?"

Padmé heard only the last. "Muunilinst?" she said, horrified. "But they can't... there are _Jedi _there..." _Or there will be soon, _a nasty voice whispered in her head.

Bail shot her a curious look. "I had not heard of that. What do you know of Jedi on Muunilinst, Senator?"

Padmé flushed and said nothing.

"We are beasts, I am afraid," said Bail. "I can barely believe that the Senate would stand for this. But it voted strongly in favor, and now..." He sounded helpless. "I argued my best. It went for nothing."

"I should have stayed," said Padmé, and as she did, the same doubting voice whispered, _Then you would not have seen Anakin. Is there any political cause worth that? Or should you have foregone him, done your duty? The Jedi are right. Love is a dangerous thing._

"Thank you, but it makes no matter. I am afraid they were already decided, and all of our arguing and posturing was nothing but a scripted scuffle." She had rarely seen Bail look so despondent. "Palpatine is stripping the flesh of democracy from the Republic, leaving only bare bones behind. After that... will there be _anything?"_

Threepio stuck his burnished golden head out from around the pillar. "Your services will not be required, thank you," said Padmé firmly. She began to finish her breakfast, but then something illogical and terrible occurred to her. She looked back at Bail, her heart starting to pound.

"Last night... they said that the method of genophon was rounding up and gassing the dissenters. Our clones are organic, but our foes are not. That's why this method has worked so well for _them. _But now _we _are attempting to reverse the process. So tell me, Bail, _did they ever mention how they plan to gas droids?"_

* * *

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine looked out at the semicircle of Senators around his desk, and smiled. The smile was directed at Padmé, who found herself somewhat leery. Palpatine was one of Anakin's closest friends, and he never had anything but good things to say about him, but although the smile was benign, open, and sincere, Padmé found herself distrusting it. Then she shook herself. Palpatine had been her advisor ever since she had been a raw girl of fourteen, lost, unsure what to do. He was a good man; he had been Senator of Naboo before her, and had guided her with a firm and kindly hand through the plethora of crises that had accompanied her queenship. She should have no fear of confiding to him.

"My lady," said Palpatine, chuckling, "you need have no fear for the gassing. It does not need to unfold that way. Disruptors or molten lava will do for the droids, well enough. Genophon is an adaptable measure."

"I can't for the life of me see why you were so worried about innocent beings, Bail," Senator Ephreon Zanor put in. "Droids are hardly beings, and hardly innocent."

"The last thing Muunilinst needs is more death," said Bail stubbornly. "If we set the entire planet in our crosshairs, you cannot believe that the Muuns, who _are _intelligent, organic beings, will come away unscathed."

"Muuns." Zanor dismissed them with a wave of the hand. "If they care so much about the fate of their planet, and of their lives, they ought throw their lot in with the Republic. Otherwise, they will all die traitors' deaths."

Padmé feared Bail might explode. Instead, he twisted his fingers together and said in a very tight, controlled voice, "I see."

"Well... have no fear. Genophon _is _atrocious, true, but we must sink to these levels in wartime." Palpatine sighed expressively. "But we shall all be glad of it when Muunilinst is freed from Separatist hands, and the droids there are scrap metal."

"And the entire planet is a reeking orb of plague," Bail muttered, quietly enough that only Padmé heard him.

Palpatine smiled again. "My friends, thank you for this concern. I shall make sure that the exact purpose of our mission on Muunilinst is made clear. For that is the great nature of our Republic – the principle of dissent."

A sudden, reckless feeling came over Padmé. "Such as, when you try to cut off excessive funding for the troops, it's treason?"

Palpatine blinked. "My lady...?"

"The Anti-Military Funding and Taxation bill," said Padmé. "I understand it was discarded as illegal just this morning."

Bail squeezed her arm, hard. "Be careful," he muttered.

Palpatine appeared genuinely perplexed. "My lady, that was no insult to your fine legislation. It was merely because in this time of war, every spare credit is needed to stave off the depraved Separatists. I cannot afford to have money, which is growing sparse as it is, rerouted to other, less important, things."

_I cannot afford, _Padmé heard. _It's true then. The Senate has become the Chancellor. _She bowed her head stiffly. "Thank you."

"It is always a pleasure, my lady." Palpatine gave her another smile and a gracious, fatherly kiss on the cheek. "You know that I treasure your advice deeply, after all these years of partnership." He swept a hand at the door. "You may go."

From the way it sounded, it was not a request. They did not take it as one.

* * *

Bail was fuming, but silently, as they left. "That is a pack of lies," he said. "He plays us skillfully, as always, and the rest of the Senators will only hear the promises. There is something wrong here. It fits too neatly."

Padmé nodded. She could not say that the prospect of genophon on Muunilinst frightened her witless, and she most certainly could not say why: that even now, her husband and her husband's best friend were streaking across the galaxy, directly toward it, and already lined up in the viewfinders of half a dozen turbolasers.

"Be brave, Senator," said Bail. He tried to give her half a smile. "Soon, this will be over...one way or another."

He turned and veered off down another corridor, leaving Padmé behind in the red-carpeted hall, bathed in the sun of early afternoon, not soothed in the slightest. Anakin had said _Palpatine himself _had assigned him this mission... She was half-convinced she would never see Anakin, or Obi-Wan, again.

For the first time, dark thoughts that had never even crossed Padmé's mind crept into it, sunk their noxious roots, and began to pound. _What if we're on the wrong side? What if Palpatine knows perfectly well that Anakin and Obi-Wan are on Muunilinst, and yet he authorized genophon anyway?_

_And what if he's planning to go through with genophon exactly as described?_

Padmé felt sick. Sick with fear, worry, anticipation, and something else – she didn't quite know what. There was a roiling knot in her stomach, and she stood there, silent and alone, for a very long time.


	13. Memories

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

**Memories**

In the jumbled silence of hyperspace, Obi-Wan had far too much time for thinking.

The only real thing he could make out was the wing of his starfighter, and occasionally the clamp that held it. Particles streamed by in psychedelic, ionized gusts. Space had fractured into thousands of hot, glowing streaks, tumbling and weaving, parting around the pointed nose of the Delta and rushing back together as it passed. He tried not to watch it; it made him dizzy.

Obi-Wan settled back in the seat and scratched his scruffy beard absentmindedly. The navicomputer flashed, adjusting parameters, keeping him and his tiny craft on a safe path through the pockmarked labyrinth of space. According to the blinking status bar, they were a little over halfway to Muunilinst.

Locked in on the left wing, Arfour dialed in the inertials and the gravity compressor, keeping the cockpit at a comfortable pressure for human life. The atmospheric regulators continually infused Obi-Wan's stale exhalation with new oxygen, and sent it through the vents yet again. After this long, it tasted raw and metallic.

The chair was comfortable, as it had to be in this starfighter where the most room available was to stretch your legs. Occasionally, Obi-Wan had drowsed, but these brief lulls were snapped almost immediately. The problem was, there was not much to do, or to remain composed for, this deep into such a long journey.

They had planned to jump out of hyperspace a few parsecs short of Muunilinst, both to refuel at a fuel cruiser and to hopefully scramble any pursuit. Even that was still achingly distant. Obi-Wan leaned back again and made a few cursory adjustments. The hyperdrive ring was doing all the work at the moment.

Despite his best efforts, Obi-Wan found his attention starting to drift. He answered over the internal comm whenever Arfour tootled a comment, occasionally tapped into the Force to check for anything – or anyone – nearby, but there was little else to do. Nothing, in fact.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. Just for a moment, he promised himself.

* * *

He dreamed of his past, of the days when he was a Padawan, fiercely and unrelentingly idealistic, devoted without thought to the Jedi Code. Those were the days when he had a Master of his own, Qui-Gon Jinn. It was Qui-Gon who had first insisted that to be a Jedi, one had to follow the Code as it presented itself.

_Just like the Force_, Qui-Gon had said, _a Jedi must be inventive, ever-changing. You must learn to relax, Obi-Wan. You must learn to follow your own way within the Order._

This was the subject of much wrangling between his Master and the Council. More than once Qui-Gon had gotten in trouble for it, and other Padawans had asked Obi-Wan if he was quite sure of his Master's disciplines. Obi-Wan had shared their skepticism, but only at first. Then he grew to know and love his Master, his way of teaching, his utter devotion. He had believed that the Force came first, even above the Jedi, and one had to submit to its wisdom, the only thing that mattered for a being given the gift of sensing it.

Obi-Wan had never quite understood Qui-Gon's seeming determination to break the rules every chance he got. But when it came down to it, as Qui-Gon lay dying in his arms, the choice was either Qui-Gon or the Code. His Master or the Council. Obi-Wan had chosen his Master, and so he had inherited as Padawan the somewhat wild, definitely unpredictable, and undoubtedly eager young boy called Anakin Skywalker. And in turn, he had become Master, and at last he began to see what Qui-Gon had meant about breaking the rules. Training Anakin had been a contest in itself.

Anakin had taught him how to loosen up, to enjoy his life rather than to simply walk through it. This was completely unheard-of for a Jedi. They meditated and mediated, studying the Force, absenting themselves from worldly desires. Anakin, however, had insisted that to be effective in the world, a Jedi had to know about it. And one day when he was seventeen, he had taken Obi-Wan to a Coruscanti street fair.

Obi-Wan had never seen anything like it. Jugglers made brightly colored holo-balls stream from hand to hand, peddlers seemed intent on pawning any number of shoddy goods off on him, and he walked along with one hand on his lightsaber under his robe, in case a light-fingered urchin saw fit to pinch it.

"Relax, Master," Anakin had urged him, laughing. "You don't have to walk like that lightsaber is stuck – " He glanced sidelong at Obi-Wan's disapproving face. "Well, like you're stiff as a board, anyway," he finished hastily. "Have you ever had fun? Thank you." He accepted a proffered sugarspun candy from a sweating Rodian.

"I don't want no Jedi trouble," the Rodian insisted. His green, pebbled skin had gone somewhat paler in anxiety, and his orb-like black eyes were fixed on Obi-Wan. He extended another candy. "Here, you have one too. Very good."

Quite unsure what to do, Obi-Wan took it with two fingers. Anakin, meanwhile, had already taken to munching at his, grinning.

"Do you normally do this?" Obi-Wan asked, glancing skittishly around at the crowd.

"Not for a long time, Master. And on Tatooine the merchants never gave out candy to slaves." Anakin's face darkened, and for a moment, Obi-Wan was afraid that he might be in a sour mood for the rest of the day, but then he shrugged, dismissing it, smiling again. "It's good to be a Jedi."

They went next to a game of chance, where various unsuspecting beings stepped up to try their hands at sabacc for the chance to win a new custom speeder. The dealer methodically fleeced their credits off them one by one, and the speeder remained unclaimed. Obi-Wan was disgusted. "Base robbery is _amusement?"_

Beside him, Anakin was still grinning. "Looks like home." His Padawan might have wanted to play, and Obi-Wan had no doubt that he would use the Force to his advantage, but even if he did outsmart the dealer, what would he do with the speeder? A Jedi kept no personal possessions.

The dealer spotted the two Jedi, and squawked in alarm. Hastily, he shooed out the inebriated Bothans clustering around his booth and swept all the sabacc cards out of sight. "Your graces! An' what can I do fer ye, eh?"

Obi-Wan opened his mouth. Anakin, under their robes, applied an elbow to his ribs.

"_Ow! _Anakin, you – "

"We just wanted to make sure that you were playing according to standard sabacc rules," Anakin said sweetly. "Such as, not having ten Knaves in the deck."

The dealer opened and closed his mouth, blinking furiously. Obi-Wan shot an accusing look at Anakin, who stared back innocently.

"Let's see," said Anakin, waving his hand. A fall of glittering sabacc cards parasailed into it, and he began turning them with the smooth, easy glide of the best cardsharks. Obi-Wan watched suspiciously, wondering where his apprentice had acquired this skill. Cin Drallig, the "Troll," a gruff but kindly old Jedi who trained Padawans in saber-dueling, was known to enjoy a game of sabacc on occasion, but still –

"Yes. Knave, Knave, Knave, Knave." Anakin filleted them precisely from the deck. "Knave, Knave, Knave. And just to complete the suit, Knave, Knave, and Knave." Sure enough, the holo-image of the Knave blinked up at them from all ten of the cards Anakin had flipped. A normal sabacc deck was equipped with two.

"As well as some other custom modifications, I have no doubt." Anakin slapped down the pirated deck. "Care for a game?"

The dealer, whose ruddy face had gone splotchy grey, managed to shake his head. Then he quickly dumped the cards into a bag and swung a CLOSED sign over his booth, departing at a high rate of speed.

"Oh, well done, Anakin," Obi-Wan muttered.

"What, Master? You're always saying that a Jedi should promote justice and fair play, so I saved a few more gullible customers from squandering their hard-earned credits on thatquack. Put it this way, us being here will _ensure _that every cheater cleans up his act."

Obi-Wan couldn't argue.

Next they arrived at a booth where a heavily rouged Twi'lek stood behind a sign proclaiming "Master Mendahl, Matchless Magician." Obi-Wan watched dubiously as the Twi'lek duplicated a series of trinkets, guessed a sabacc card without looking at it, pulled a credit from a pretty young girl's ear, made it disappear, and then reappear (in a shower of fire) just above his head.

Obi-Wan sniffed. "Sleight-of-hand. Is this supposed to be amusement?"

Just then, the Twi'lek caught sight of them. "Ah! Master Jedi! Will you consent to perform a small trick for me?"

"Certainly not. The Jedi Order are not parlor-entertainers – " Obi-Wan began. Too late. Anakin was already galumphing past him up the steps.

"Here is my – ah – handsome assistant!" the Twi'lek bellowed, with commendable lungpower. "On the count of three, I shall make this young man disappear!"

Obi-Wan fumbled for his lightsaber. Anakin mouthed, _Honestly, Master._

The Twi'lek made an enormous show of ushering Anakin, who was grinning like a loon, into a small curtained chamber. He waved his hands about and led the crowd in a dramatic countdown. Excepting Obi-Wan, who was watching with his arms folded.

"_THREE – TWO – ONE!" _the Twi'lek shouted, and whipped the curtain aside.

As promised, Anakin was nowhere to be found.

Obi-Wan took one step forward, his lightsaber already half-out, and was about to take another, when a hand descended on his shoulder from behind. Laughing, a woman's voice said, "Kenobi, you idiot, he's just behind the curtain."

"Pick up the curtain!" somebody shouted.

With a great sigh and a flourish, the Twi'lek plucked up the curtain – and stopped. Anakin was still gone.

"Bring him back!" Obi-Wan shouted at the perplexed magician. "_Now!"_

"Don't you ever relax?" the woman asked in his ear. He felt her breath on his cheek.

"When it comes to something important, such as my lightsaber or my apprentice disappearing, then no," Obi-Wan said tightly. He was about to surge up the steps, but the woman kept a hold on his shoulder.

"You've still got one of two," she observed.

"This is _not funny!" _Obi-Wan bellowed.

The Twi'lek was gabbling. "So sorry, Master Jedi, I'll reverse it, of course – " He tripped over himself dashing back, and hastily repeated his jumbled, extravagant gestures. He picked up the curtain, looking desperately hopeful. Still no Anakin.

"Please, Master Jedi – didn't do it on purpose," the Twi'lek entreated a very angry Obi-Wan.

At that moment, someone yelled, "There he is!"

Heads turned. Sure enough, at that moment, Anakin came sauntering up through the crowd, his grin wider and more dazzling than ever. He was clapped on the back by any number of admiring onlookers.

The grin faltered as he gazed at Obi-Wan, then his eyes shifted back. _"Siri?" _he said.

Obi-Wan wheeled about. Sure enough, the woman behind him was dressed in Jedi robes, and even those could not dull her exotic beauty. Her white-blonde hair was coiled severely behind her head, accenting sharp cheekbones and blue eyes, and the smile that she flashed at him was that of the Padawan he had known, once upon a time. She looked at him, smiled brighter, tilted her head a bit so the shadows striped her face, made her look almost alien, exotic.

That was the beginning of the end for him.

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi had never broken the Code before. He had not intended to start. The glimpse of Siri Tachi at the street fair had completely undone him. She had been Master Adi Gallia's Padawan, and they had worked together, years ago, when they had both been apprentices. He had scarcely seen her since then.

She had come to his quarters that night. To talk, they had both agreed, and talked they had, at first. She had brought some old records from the Jedi archives. They had debated the meaning of life and of the Force, turned pages and scrolled through datapads, hair whispering against skin, hands brushing ever so slightly. They argued about the meaning of politics and power. Their bickering had subsided into friendly banter charged with – with what? Neither had been sure.

They paused, stared at each other. Siri opened her mouth, Obi-Wan covered it with his hand. There was a moment when the world seemed to stand on the brink, and when the moment ended, it shattered like glass. And then they had stepped together, stepped closer, and pushed the datapads off the table to get them out of the way.

* * *

Their affair had been magnetic and shattering. Neither Siri nor Obi-Wan could get out of their heads the _wrongness _of what they had done. Despite the fact that their mutual connection to the Force granted them perfect physical and mental intimacy, their meetings, even when both were at the Temple, were infrequent, and they always made excuses afterwards. And yet, when one sent a message to the other, they could not resist.

Obi-Wan had worried constantly over what they might do if they were found out. It turned out he should not have. About a year later, Siri was charged to escort the Naboo Senator, Amidala Naberrie, to a secret meeting on an outlying system – they were uneasily sure that it was a trap, but it was too dangerous to refuse if it wasn't. As it turned out, they were correct. The target had been Amidala, and Siri had thrown herself in the way. The only remnant they had ever found of her had been scraps of blasted metal, drifting in the orbit of the planet's icy moon.

This was Obi-Wan's secret. This was the one thing he had never told anyone, never hinted to, not Anakin and not Yoda. It had taught him one thing, and that was that Qui-Gon, however much he respected and cherished him, had been wrong. It was never right to break the Code. It was there for a reason, to save the Jedi from the divided loyalty and the agony that was love.

And yet, Obi-Wan of all the Jedi seemed to have formed it the most. He had loved his Master; he had been heartbroken when Qui-Gon was murdered. He loved Anakin; their relationship had grown from the dictated formality of Master and Padawan to close friends who could imagine it no other way. He had, for a short, regrettable while, loved Siri, and two of those three had ended in pain. Obi-Wan and love did not have a good track record. He had resolved he would follow the Code to the letter henceforth, and he had almost succeeded. His only true love was the Force. He did not dwell on the past. He cared for nothing except his life as a Jedi. That was _almost _everything, but not all.

It was Anakin he could not bear to lose.

And this, he knew full well, was a weakness.

* * *

The insistent bleeping of a tracker feed woke Obi-Wan. He started badly, his crash webbing throwing him back in his seat, and reached out to silence it. The prescribed leap out of hyperspace was almost upon him, and the vortex of light and splintered space around him began to slow. Obi-Wan rerouted control from the hyperdrive ring back into the throttle, and watched intently as the glowing numbers counted down. At the moment they reached zero, he pulled the lever, and the starstreaks froze as he exploded back into realspace.

The Republic fuel cruiser was there, a silhouette floating on the horizon. Obi-Wan nudged the Delta-7 up alongside it, then, as the labor droids began to replenish it, he keyed Anakin's frequency. "Anakin, come in."

A burst of static, then Anakin's voice, far away and faint. "Bad signal, sorry."

"When will you arr – "

Nothing answered but the fizz of a snapping connection. Obi-Wan sighed and waited, and a few seconds later, space flashed white – when the iridescent geyser subsided, Anakin's starfighter had sprouted in the middle. He turned it, shot up next to Obi-Wan. "Sorry, Master. Hard to get a signal through that stellar disruption."

"All right." The glow of the transmit button was the brightest thing in the pitch-black cockpit. This was in the middle of nowhere, and they were not yet to Muunilinst, which was so far on the Outer Rim it was practically its own system.

A few minutes later, the refueling finished, and the hoses coiled back into the fuel cruiser's cavernous innards. Obi-Wan pulled away, entering the final coordinates for Muunilinst. On the edges of his Force-enhanced perception, he was aware of Anakin doing the same. The starlines gathered again, and for what he hoped would be the last time in a long while, Obi-Wan rocketed off into hyperspace.

* * *

One starfighter over, Anakin was doing anything but letting go of the past.

He had slept and half-dreamed, fragments of thought and memory combined into a murky mental slop. Every so often he would stir and start, check the data readouts, and sink back into a haze, which was punctuated by Artoo's intermittent chirps.

He thought of his last night – perhaps his last _ever – _with Padmé. There was a part of him that seriously doubted he would make it back from Muunilinst. But then again, he had survived Geonosis, Jabiim, Aargonar, and, most terrifying of all, Coruscant. Perhaps his supernaturally good fortune would hold out for just one more mission.

Padmé. He already missed her. The Jedi Code explicitly forbade attachments, as had been drilled into his head a thousand and one times. For Anakin, it was unthinkable. Despite all they had tried to indoctrinate him, he could not do it. A life without love was a life of ashes, darkness, dust. And he was starting to suspect that the Jedi were frightened. Frightened of being hurt, essentially children at heart, too sheltered and naïve to deal with the pleasure – and the pain – of love.

_If their commitment to the Force is that strong, they shouldn't have to worry about something else being a distraction. Or are they afraid their beloved Force would lose that competition? _Anakin wondered, even as Artoo bleated an irrelevant comment on the density of the cosmic dust they were currently tearing through.

And Obi-Wan was the worst of them. He was constantly lecturing on how love distracted a Jedi's path, clouded his vision. Anakin was quite sure of one thing – his erstwhile Master had never been in love. If he'd ever had personal experience, Anakin thought, he might have changed his tune.

Losing his mother on Tatooine, and nearly losing Obi-Wan on Jabiim, had frightened Anakin badly. The reality of mortality terrified him. He still dreamed about Shmi's death and the black rage that had followed, and oftentimes in his nightmares, he had never found Obi-Wan in time to rescue him from Ventress, or he died on the flight back home. And now, leaving Padmé alone, leaving his dearest treasure in a world of shadows and lies, made Anakin uptight and anxious. He wanted to get to Muunilinst, kill Ventress, and get back to Coruscant.

_Obi-Wan says that a Jedi does not have nightmares. Obi-Wan says that a Jedi's mind is always clear. _That frustrated Anakin even more, and he slapped his black-gloved durasteel hand on the console. _What does he know? Nothing._

* * *

A very long time later, two starfighters emerged from the blackness of deepspace. Their dual hyperdrive rings drifted side by side, and docking clamps disengaged. Together, the Delta-7 starfighters dove down, down, down, toward the seething sphere of red sky and black cloud that was Muunilinst. The Jedi inside reached out, irrigating the planet with Force-energy, seeking for the taint.

It was no use. The taint was already all around them.

* * *

After much exploration, and forceful dispossession via lightsaber, Asajj had cleaned several refugee Muuns out of a small, suitable room, stripped it to the bare essentials, and settled in to wait. Outside the window, the never-ending explosions still streaked the sky, and the floor shook alarmingly, but she had forgotten about that. She sat with her back rapier-straight, eyes open, in a waking trance.

There was a scuffed full-length reflection plate at the end of the room. After a moment, Asajj rose and crossed to it, studying herself. She was of medium height, whip-thin, with a graceful neck and slender shoulders. Her skin was very pale, almost white, fine as porcelain, with translucent blue veins coiling through it, and her head was shaved – a mockery of Master Windu, if you chose to take it that way.

She wore padded armor beneath a black leather shell, and her knee-high boots fitted close to her legs. A utility belt spanned her narrow waist, and hung from this was her lightsaber. It was this that Asajj was the most proud of. The hilt was curved out of respect for the design of her Master's weapon, and the blade emitter shroud was a clawlike shard of metal that she kept sharp enough to cut. She turned it in her delicate, spidery hands, studying it with flinty black eyes.

The hilt was grooved with identifying marks, and contained inside were three Corusca gems of peerless quality, each colored a deep, bloody red. Asajj had built it herself, and trained with it tirelessly. Not for her the standard blue-blade straight-hilt Jedi weapon. A Sith needed something better.

Asajj lifted the weapon and pressed the power stud. A glowing stream of scarlet energy exploded from the hilt, and she smiled and brought the lightsaber to bear, admiring the effect in the dark reflection plate.

A stirring in the Force brought her attention back to the task at hand. The Jedi were near, very near. Possibly they had already landed, and so Asajj deactivated her lightsaber – there would be time to use it soon enough – and hooked it back onto her belt. She lifted her black cloak and shrugged into it, making sure the cowl masked her face entirely. Then she left, walked outside to the waiting speeder, and straddled the narrow leather seat.

A few quick flicks with the Force, and the engine growled to life. Bending low over the handlebars, eyes fixed on the cloud-murk horizon, Asajj Ventress broke into the sharp-edged, utterly dangerous smile of a hunter and shot off to burn out her prey.


	14. Pursuit

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

**Pursuit**

The matched pair of Jedi starfighters pierced the heavy clouds of Muunilinst and soared down to catch their first glimpse of the tattered surface below. Gusts of foul exhaust belched from the factories, and no scopes were needed to guess the locations of the battles. They were everywhere, marked in dazzling flashes, and the Deltas had to constantly change course to avoid being spotted. The blasts kicked up dust and rubble, making steering in and of itself a challenge. Obi-Wan gritted his teeth. This was the part of flying that he hated.

"_Hard left, hard left, sensor bank dead ahead," _Anakin crackled. _"Quick snap-roll ought to scramble them nicely..."_

As if pulled by the power of his words, Anakin's Delta executed a perfect inverted roll, and the sensors bleeped futilely as their linear-align mechanism lost track of which wing was which – and therefore, the entire infrastructure of the ship. While it was thusly confused, Obi-Wan followed suit, tracking midair exactly where Anakin had just been. The eye-banks swiveled, but could not readjust in time to get a proper fix. By then, the two Jedi were already gone.

Anakin and Obi-Wan swept low over the Muunilinst landscape, flying closely side by side. Their wings almost touched as they pulled up to avoid errant turbolasers or dove down to avoid troopships lumbering overhead. Their running lights were off, and the thick cloud cover served them well. The only way they knew where the other was flying was through the Force, and this also served to identify other landmarks to them as well. Well, at least in theory.

"_Problem. Massive rock outcropping ahead. Full throttle up," _Obi-Wan transmitted, sounding, to Anakin's ears at any rate, just a touch panicked.

The starfighters ascended in graceful unison, shearing identical vectors through the turbulent air. Both Anakin and Obi-Wan bounced in their seats, heads jarring against reassuringly and unfortunately solid transparisteel. _"Got a knock there," _Obi-Wan informed Anakin. _"Where _is _she?"_

"_Obviously, I'm not entirely sure, Master. Artoo, increase landscape scanning."_

Obi-Wan heard, faintly, what was presumably a tweedle of assent. A second later, the results flashed onto his own screen, which was remotely linked to Anakin's. "_No, no good, we're going in the wrong direction."_

"_Cities are scattered here. I'm not using the scanner so much. I'm searching in the Force."_

"_Oh, wonderful." _Obi-Wan gritted his teeth again as his disobedient starfighter bounced and writhed through an unexpected updraft. "Try _not to set Ventress off on us before we even land – "_

"_I'm trying not to, Master. I could use a little help, though."_

Obi-Wan extended a tendril of energy, taking as much concentration away from steering as he dared. The modicum of power threaded low, scouring the surface, trying to lock on anything living and Force-sensitive. "_Found anything?" _he asked.

"_Sure, something like a giant womp-rat that's stalking some of the clones. No go on Ventress, though."_

Obi-Wan sighed, but without true bite. Anakin's impertinence irritated him, yet somewhere along the line, he had grown used to it. _"Well, blast it then."_

"_Can't. Hard to get a lock on a target at these speeds, and I bet Artoo can't calibrate the guns from this high up – " _Anakin was interrupted by an affronted warble from the astromech. "_All right, I've been reprimanded. He's trying."_ That was a habit he had fallen into recently, talking to the little mechanic as if it were a human, not just a roughly cylindrical hunk of sensors and gadgetry with three locomotion legs and various upgrades, most installed by Anakin himself.

All Obi-Wan could see was the thin, fiery edge where sky and ground split. He was entirely dependent on the Force to sense obstacles in his flight path. "_Is he mad?"_

"_No, Master, I am." _Despite the gravity of this, Anakin was laughing.

As Obi-Wan concentrated on not crashing, Anakin was bantering light-heartedly with Artoo. A second later, the echo of gunfire came over Obi-Wan's comm, accompanied something that sounded decidedly like smugness from the droid.

"_I stand corrected. Good job, Artoo," _Anakin enthused.

Obi-Wan shook his head. That was the thing about Anakin. While he was sitting here with white knuckles, barely daring to breathe as the starfighter rattled through the heavens, Anakin could make a joke of it, enjoy himself. He was, after all, possibly the best pilot in the galaxy. There was nothing Anakin had met that he couldn't fly, including some things which hadn't been meant to fly in the first place.

There was a long silence on the comm channels. Once or twice, Obi-Wan heard the sharp report of Anakin's guns, and decided against asking what he was taking potshots at. At last, the darkness was leavened by a cracked flurry of light from above, burning through the pitted clouds. "_Might have found something," _Anakin crackled. "_Just a few klicks more."_

"_Good." _Obi-Wan kept tight on Anakin's wing, oddly hyperaware of everything outside him but not inside the starfighter, as if he was the dream within the real world. The Force was swallowing him, spilling through him, and his hands moved of their own accord to skirt rock columns and sprays of laser blasts.

"_Whatever it is, it's definitely Force-sensitive. Unless Jango Fett had a secret no one told us about, I think it may be Ventress," _Anakin added.

Obi-Wan exhaled, possibly for the first time all mission. "_All right. We can't come straight in – we have to land distant and sneak in."_

"_Just what I love," _Anakin returned wryly. "_Sightseeing jaunts through a war zone."_

The Deltas slid back beneath a protective veneer of cloud, this one so thick that it completely sieved out any light from above. Thick raindrops pelted Obi-Wan's windscreen, and all he could hear was the erratic, coughing whine in his exhausted sublights. He fought the throttle to keep the starfighter on a manageable course.

"_It's a better path up a bit higher," _Anakin offered.

Obi-Wan veered sharply upwards, and sure enough, the rough flight eased a bit. _"Why is it I always find these things out the hard way?"_

"_No idea." _Anakin sounded positively fiendish.

"_Just below...a small plain. It'll do for now."_

"_Agreed."_

Both starfighters dove, smoothing their plunges into graceful, skimming landings, and the engines cut out with relief. Both Obi-Wan and Anakin waited several seconds to make sure they hadn't been detected, then pulled their hoods up and stepped out onto the cold, dust-deviled ground of Muunilinst.

Obi-Wan winced in agony as cramps in both legs made themselves known. Gingerly, he took a few steps, shaking out red-hot pins and needles, attempting to infuse some pliability back into his body. "I hate flying."

"You may have mentioned that." Anakin was a tall, hooded shadow next to him, but he could hear the smile in his voice. "Let's go."

"Yes, let's," Obi-Wan agreed faintly, as blood rushed to his previously numb extremities. Not telling Anakin of this – and he probably knew already – he led the way into the forbidding land, his partner and best friend at his side.

* * *

Asajj was very good at tracking. Keeping low to the ground, she navigated the speeder in concentric circles, widening her range with each pass, keeping an eye on the scanners and peering into the opaque murk. The Jedi had to be nearby, since she'd seen their starfighters fly overhead not long ago. She did not want to engage them here, as her Master had told her that she must always choose the grounds for confrontation. "Force them to meet you on _your _terms," he had said.

Something moved ahead in the gloom and Asajj instinctively cut her engines and slid to a halt, but it was just a lost clone, separated from his battalion. She debated on taking him out, but it might attract the Jedi. She wanted to lure them in, and that did not include being caught off guard. After a few moments, when nothing else had materialized, she kicked the speeder back into gear and resumed the pursuit.

Her mind fell into a strange detachment. Although he had not said so in so many words, she knew that Lord Tyranus was concerned that this mission might reawaken her long-dead Jedi sympathies. Master Kenobi, in particular, had a confounded habit of offering a truce and the choice to return to the light side.

_Well, that's his fatal flaw, isn't it? While he's preaching his platitudes, I'll stick it in his throat. _Somewhat comforted, Asajj gunned the speeder. Lord Tyranus would see, once and for all, that she was fully loyal to the Sith. The Jedi had had their chance, and now they were nothing to her, less than nothing.

After a very long time, two faint, tiny silhouettes came into view at the uttermost edge of the horizon. Asajj immediately drew to a halt, and hung motionless, her heart pounding, just long enough to be certain they had sensed her. Then she turned around and shot back the way she had come.

Obi-Wan and Anakin had been trudging through sand, rock, and mud for what felt like eons, usually in poor light. A perpetual acrid stench hung in the air, burning their eyes and throats, and they had to duck whenever patrols passed overhead. One particularly horrible time, the only shelter available had been a muddy hole, so Anakin had pushed Obi-Wan in first and jumped in after him. Obi-Wan lay flat on his back in three inches of soupy muck, Anakin's weight crushing him, trying very hard to keep his mind on the importance of the mission and not the unpleasantness of the current situation.

He had been spluttering after that, as Anakin hauled him out. "Padawan!" he snapped.

He saw the brief, icy distance in Anakin's eyes that came with the use of the word, and corrected himself. "Anakin. Next time our presence must be masked with inventive use of mud, _you _go on the bottom." His robe was soaked and filthy, and the rest of him wasn't much better off.

"Fair enough," said Anakin, brushing murky globules of mud off his own head and shoulders. The two of them looked like some feral raiders from the desert, and certainly not Jedi Knights. Obi-Wan reflected that this might be an improvement.

Obi-Wan cleaned the mud out from his lightsaber, eyed the sky warily for any patrols that might have approached during this fiasco, and said, "All right. Let's go."

They renewed their march across the desert. With Anakin's preternaturally sharp sense of direction and, of course, the Force, Obi-Wan had no worries about finding the Deltas again. He did, however, worry about _surviving _long enough to get back.

"How much farther?" Anakin asked. The mud was drying like a carapace over their bodies, cracking as it did so, giving them both the appearance of walking rocks.

Obi-Wan clawed a particularly large chunk out of his hair. "I don't know. It didn't seem that far from the air."

"And there's the trouble," Anakin muttered, but quietly. However, after several more minutes of concentrated stumbling, he pointed, and with a sudden sharp note in his voice, said, "Look, there's something up there."

Sure enough, a small, stationary dot was visible on the horizon. Both Obi-Wan and Anakin could feel the Force-sensitivity, and the unfriendliness, of the thing watching.

"Ventress," said Anakin. "It has to be."

"You may be right," Obi-Wan muttered. "Hurry up, she's turning around!"

The speeder, sure enough, was whirling around and arrowing off, farther away from them. Obi-Wan and Anakin picked up their pace, calling on the Force for aid, and began to run. When they wanted to, Jedi could move extraordinarily quickly, but even they could not overtake a speeder on full throttle.

Obi-Wan willed away physical exhaustion through the Force, coaxing more from his legs. He was careful not to draw too close, in case she was hoping to catch a trace of their presence. In fact, it had occurred to him more than once that she could be trapping them, and a part of him found that he did not care. Ventress, Palpatine, the Council, and no doubt everyone else associated with Muunilinst had been manipulating them from the start, and he was tired of it.

If it was a trap, he was walking into it with his eyes wide open. They had been sent after a _Sith, _for the Maker's sake. The traps and tricks would be everywhere. Obi-Wan was used to them by now. In this war, avoid one, and you'd step into the next.

The trek was long and arduous. Obi-Wan's mud-soaked clothes clung to him, chill and damp, and soon enough, it seeped into his bones. Daylight flickered in and out, and the rainstorms seemed to stop and start by the minute. The bright side was that it washed the armorplates of mud off them. Obi-Wan decided that being soaked by rain instead was an improvement, if only a very slight one.

What felt like days later, the rain subsided, and two very bedraggled Jedi found themselves standing before an enormous bunker, built into a massive, overhanging shelf of rock. One or two security beacons flashed, but the place seemed deserted.

Obi-Wan assumed it was therefore crawling with battle droids, along with a full complement of sentries with very large cannons attuned precisely to utterly eradicate anything organic and Republic-sympathizing that happened along. As it was, he and Anakin fell under that definition, and although they had scarcely had light for the duration of the trek, night was now falling. The sky was streaked in fragmented, unnatural colors, both from turbolasers and the diffracted gamma-rays.

"Interesting," said Anakin, concisely.

Obi-Wan looked for a hidden platform, door, or other place that Ventress might have entered. A steam column was in evidence to the right, belching hot white plumes, and there was a shield generator to the left. Otherwise, it was locked down.

"We'll have to hijack our way in, then," said Anakin. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Who do we want to be, Master, Separatists or Separatist-loyal Muun rebels?"

Instead of answering, Obi-Wan just looked at him. "Why do you still call me that?"

Anakin seemed taken aback. "Because that's what I've always called you. It's the only thing I've ever known you as, that's why."

"You are under no obligation, you know. If you want to address me as _Obi-Wan, _I promise it wouldn't shock me." A teasing inflection crept into his voice.

Anakin's blue gaze focused sharply on him. "You never used to do that."

"Do what?" said Obi-Wan, now the puzzled one.

"Joke," said Anakin simply.

"Oh. Well." Obi-Wan turned back to the task at hand. "This reminiscing is all very well and good, but we have a fortress to storm."

"With two of us? Are you sure it isn't just a squall?"

Obi-Wan turned in exasperation, only to be confronted by a glowing, sincere smile. Not for the first time, Obi-Wan realized that while he might obsessively analyze and become clinically detached, treating the mission as a puzzle to be solved, Anakin vested himself emotionally in everything he did. Whether it was fury at Ventress, indignation at the Council, or daring to kid him _here, _of all places, it was simply impossible for Anakin to remain unattached to the situation at hand.

This worried Obi-Wan, but he decided not to mention it. Instead he said, "I think the leftover mud and the excessive amount of water will do for disguises. Remember, Anakin, we are here to fight Ventress, not half the droids in the fortress."

"Yes, Master," Anakin echoed. "Now let's find a way to crash this."

"If you say so," Obi-Wan muttered. Extremely mistrustful, he took a deep breath and followed Anakin into the shadow of the cliffs.

Once they had removed themselves from the final, sputtering light, the air became black as pitch. Obi-Wan reached out blindly, his hands grazing rough stone, and once the cloth of Anakin's robe. Then quite by accident, she tumbled over something.

"Anakin?" he said warily.

"Yes, Master?"

"There's something here."

A second later, a blue radiance suffused the damp darkness. Its source was Anakin's lightsaber, held outthrust in his durasteel hand. "What is it?"

Obi-Wan looked down. The source of the pain in his right calf was a round access port, wide enough to admit a man, studded with a circular crown of rivets and welded shut. The metal had rusted, and a faint whistling breathed up through it.

"What is that?" Anakin knelt beside him. "Can you get it open?"

"I _don't _know that that's the wisest idea – " Obi-Wan began.

Ignoring him, Anakin flicked out his multitool, and carefully wedged the flat blade into the edge of one of the rivets. "Come _on, _you," he muttered, swearing under his breath as the rivet crumbled into dust.

"It could be an exhaust port, or something worse," Obi-Wan cautioned. "I don't fancy a leap into poisonous gas, thank you very – "

"Stop worrying, Master." Anakin looked up from his work long enough to give Obi-Wan a crooked smile. "If it was exhaust, it'd probably smell worse."

"Hmmph."

"Here, hold this." Anakin let go of the lightsaber and waved it into the air with the Force; it sailed over Obi-Wan's head close enough to singe his hair and then descended. Obi-Wan sighed, but took hold of the hilt.

At that moment, something definitely moved in the deep darkness that surrounded them – the lightsaber's glow could pierce no farther than a few meters – and Anakin was instantly on his guard. "Who's there?"

No answer.

"I wish we'd risked the Deltas," Obi-Wan whispered. "If we need to make a fast escape, it's going to be a challenge on foot."

Anakin rolled his eyes. _"Now _you tell me this." Then he returned his attention to the unknown, lurking thing. "Show yourself, or you will be destroyed."

Obi-Wan frowned. With a quick, smooth motion, he passed the lightsaber back to Anakin and put his hand on the hilt of his own, just in case.

Nothing appeared. Anakin swore again and stood up, extending his blade in a quick, spark-throwing slash. It hummed as he swept it back and forth, casting light on the pitted ground. "_Show yourself!" _Anakin shouted at the unheeding darkness.

"Anakin, stop this." Obi-Wan rose just far enough to pull him back down. "All you're doing is revealing our position. Didn't you think? Stretch out with the Force."

"It could be a droid. Let go of me." Anakin wrenched out of Obi-Wan's grip and took two brusque strides forward, raising his lightsaber into a fighting stance. Obi-Wan shook his head, wondering where he had gone so wrong in Anakin's training, or if he had nursed this defiant core since before he had been a Jedi.

Obi-Wan had lived in the Temple since he was a baby; he had never known his parents or even what planet he had been born on. The Jedi had sensed his Force talent early, and taken him away for training. Anakin, in contrast, had been born on rough-and-tumble Tatooine as a slave, the only child of a loving mother, experiencing firsthand the injustices of the galaxy until Qui-Gon had rescued him at the age of nine. Previously, the latest any Jedi had started the training was at three.

Perhaps, Obi-Wan thought, even as he stood tense, looking out for the attacker, it was nothing he had done. Perhaps the knowledge of evil had been instilled in Anakin's mind long before they had become Master and Padawan.

Anakin's lightsaber cast glittering shards of light. Obi-Wan stood very still, stretching out through the Force. It was strangely impossible to determine what it was. Droids were harder to sense, but they did cause a noticeable presence. What _was _there?

There was silence, so quiet that Obi-Wan could hear his own heart beating. When nothing came forth, Anakin shook his head and turned away slightly, but didn't lower his guard. He bent down again and began to determinedly chip at the stubborn rivets.

Obi-Wan, too nervous to be still, tracked a wary circle around Anakin, eyes flicking out into the blackness. Every so often, a turbolaser blast would light up the horizon, and he thought he saw something, but the flashes were too brief to be sure. Either way, he felt terribly exposed. At his feet, Anakin worked steadily, muttering a constant stream of encouragements and profanities, until a sudden, ice-cold blast took them both quite off guard.

Anakin leapt backwards, landing awkwardly, as the durasteel cover popped free and clattered away down the steam-slicked rocks. Glittering drops of condensation hung thick on the air, frosting faces and hands with an icy sheen.

"Crude, but effective." Obi-Wan looked down at the vent. By now, it had stopped spewing and gaped silently, and nothing but cold air could be sensed beyond it. "I d-don't think this is the best w-way in," he added. The spume of frigid mist had left him soaked and shivering, and it was already freezing onto the rocks.

"What do _you_ suggest, Master? This place is locked up tighter than Huttese treasure." The use of Tatooine slang suggested that Anakin was getting frustrated.

"There has to be another way in," Obi-Wan insisted.

"Yes, if you care to lock yourself in the targeting scopes of half a dozen sentries that have been waiting for this particular moment, _and _get spotted by anything flying overhead, _and _announce your presence to Ventress clean as you please – "

" – As if you hadn't already done that – "

"This is a very interesting conversation, Master. I hope we get a chance to finish it."

Obi-Wan opened his mouth furiously, but it was too late. Anakin stood, wrapped his robe tightly around his body, and stepped forward into the small exhaust port. In a second, he was gone, and a glacially cold blast jetted up in his place.

"I _hate_ it when he does that," Obi-Wan muttered helplessly.


	15. Downfalls

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

**Downfalls**

Darth Sidious rarely dreamed; in fact he rarely even slept. Even on the few occasions that he actually succumbed to physical exhaustion, his mind was too used to running on its own time, and refused to be calmed. And besides... sleeping seemed such a _vulnerable _thing to do. He had killed his own Master while he slept, and although Tyranus was half a galaxy away, wreaking havoc, Sidious would take no chances. Plagueis had been a fool, if a useful and confoundedly noble one. In Sidious' experience, those were often the most dangerous breed.

He had no need to trust himself to figments of imagination. He was arranging the pieces for his own dream just as well. And when the nightmare began, no one in the Republic would be able to wake up.

He was amused by the Senators, as their concerns for their fragile Republic were touching in a quaint, antiquarian sort of way. He had not always been Darth Sidious, but those days were so long ago he could scarcely remember them.

Sidious stood at the apex of the world, or at least that of Five Hundred Republica, Coruscant sprawled below him in all its slothful ignorance. So the Jedi had gone. He wondered if they had reached Muunilinst yet; it amused Sidious more than he could say to use the Jedi to fight his personal battles. They had no idea of the true nature of their mission – to carry out a Dark Lord of the Sith's deadly revenge.

There was another, more practical reason to have them gone. He told Anakin _almost _everything, as only befit his future apprentice, and unfortunately, Anakin had the bad habit of repeating _most_ – fortunately not all – of it to Obi-Wan, who of course sat on the Council. Had that link been still intact, the Council would have already found out about the authorization of genophon, and then would have raised all hell to stop him.

Sidious saw no reason they _should _find out.

When the clones died on Muunilinst, no one would know why. Of course, the droids would be reduced to scrap as well. Muunilinst itself would become a wasteland, an empty and useless planet, and perfect for the rise of Sidious' next unfortunate surprise. This one was his most vicious yet.

Dok'ren Chadaaa had once been a Geonosian of some repute, a high adviser to Archduke Poggle the Lesser. He had been killed, or so everyone thought, in the arena at Geonosis along with thousands of his kind. Sidious had thought otherwise. It was his right, of course, as Sith Lord, to decide that Dok'ren was not yet dead after all. So he had had an armorplast skeleton built to house Dok'ren's damaged remnants, and wired him into a heavily modified life-support system and droid body.

Sidious was very good at patching broken, shattered beings into cyborg shells, installing mechanical entrails to force life into even the most derelict organic hulk. The resulting creature was a hideous hybrid of alien and droid, flesh and durasteel, cold analysis and merciless action – in short, the perfect genocidal tool. Dok'ren had been rechristened Grievous, and he had already been heading large factions of the Separatists without the Republic ever knowing. The Republic relied on Sidious to distribute the war news.

Muunilinst was a theater stage, albeit one on a galactic level. For the Sith, a planet was merely a passing interest. The utter destruction of its life would herald the arrival of GeneralGrievous.

Sidious smiled thinly. Muunilinst and Grievous – the two names would hereafter be inextricable. Muunilinst's ruin would be forever blamed on Grievous, exonerating him, Sidious, of any mistakes in the genophon. It was time the galaxy learned who they were dealing with. The Clone Wars would never be the same.

The Clone Wars themselves were another Sith tool. They were the perfect Jedi trap.

His lackeys had their orders. Anakin Skywalker was to be spared, miraculously flying home to Coruscant, the lone survivor of a blood-spattered slaughter. The Hero With No Fear. The people would love him, but his heart and mind would be shattered.

Anakin loved Obi-Wan deeply, but the Master's death alone was not enough to secure the student's compliance, and they could not count on it. The Separatists' goal from the beginning of the war had been to assassinate Kenobi, and yet they had found that time after time, from Raxus Prime to Geonosis to Jabiim, the Jedi general was shoved to the very edge – and then clawed back.

Sidious had a healthy respect for the task of killing Kenobi by now. Lesser Jedi had been slaughtered by the bushel, their blood spilled across thousands of far-flung planets, mourned as regrettable, heroic casualties. And through it all, Kenobi had remained stubbornly alive. He had been left for dead on Jabiim, but – this irony would have been delicious if it wasn't so bitter – one of Sidious' own clones, Alpha, had loyally accompanied him to the end, even taking some of the worst blows. They would just have to be extra-careful to get the job done, _correctly, _on Muunilinst.

Sidious still held out hope that Kenobi and Asajj Ventress would kill each other, which would solve two problems at once. It was entirely possible. Asajj could make short work of anything that challenged her with a lightsaber, and Kenobi was painted as the archetypal Jedi, but in truth, he had a serious weakness. Sith Lords.

Sidious knew, through Anakin, that Kenobi still blamed himself for not killing the Sith before it had killed Qui-Gon. This was not a Jedi-like emotion, which was why Kenobi, ever the obedient, did such an exemplary job at veiling it. But it had been confirmed when Tyranus revealed the identity of Qui-Gon's Master: himself. Obi-Wan had been stunned, momentarily defenseless, and had finally answered bitterly that Qui-Gon would never join a _Sith. _That was the reason that the Jedi existed: to stamp them out. And Obi-Wan had always been chief of this sentiment.

Obi-Wan was not allowed to, but he hated the Sith – perhaps even he was not aware of it. If Ventress lived, Sidious knew that Kenobi would hunt her. Both for what she had done to him, and for the simple fact of what she was.

There was something else that needed doing, Sidious thought. Some final key needed to seal the gate behind Anakin, make a return all but impossible. He need not worry about the Council or the Code, as Anakin had never held either in high esteem.

There was something else, however. Something far more important than Obi-Wan, prestige, heroism, or even the Jedi themselves, that Anakin loved. Something that he guarded with all his overheated, fiery heart. His wife.

Sidious smiled again. He almost never laughed, but the threat of it was bad enough. In a few short days, Muunilinst would be sacked, Grievous simultaneously blamed and made known to the galaxy, the Clone Wars forever changed, Kenobi and Ventress – hopefully – dead, and Skywalker falling, little by little and now in greater plunges, toward the event horizon of the Sith.

* * *

Bail Organa sat staring over the glittering cityscape, utterly alone and in disgrace.

It had been authorized today. Despite all his best efforts, the order had been signed into law. Everything and everyone loyal or suspected of being loyal to the Separatists on Muunilinst, Jabiim, and Aargonar would be tracked down by special, highly equipped clone battalions and killed, quickly and without remorse.

Palpatine had called these clones "stormtroopers," and had praised their role in restoring peace to the Republic. Bail could barely breathe for the knot in his throat. The endless conflict had hardened him, stripped the final sentimental gloss from the handsome only son of a rich Alderaanian house. A very long time ago, he might have recoiled at executing a Separatist prisoner of war, but those days were past – he had watched the death of a hundred of them without emotion.

But still, it was one thing to strike military targets. It was quite another to include thousands of sentient, mainly innocent beings in the indiscriminate slaughter. There were too many ways that genophon could go disastrously wrong, and Bail wondered how in the world the Jedi could go along with this. Their Order had been built on the foundations of peace and justice, and they revered the lives of others deeply, as it was all channeled into their great, mystical Force. What had Palpatine done to make them agree?

Surely the Jedi must _know? _Bail was growing more worried by the second. Master Kenobi would never have permitted it; he would have told the Council and had a protest raised within the hour. Where _was _he? Bail needed to find him, needed to tell him what the Republic was doing in the name of security.

His comlink buzzed, flicking to a secure channel, and Bail picked it up. "Organa."

"Bail," the woman on the other end breathed. "You're all right."

A cold knot lodged itself in Bail's chest. "Breha. What is it?"

Breha Antilles Organa was his wife, the daughter of Alderaan's royal family, called the Queen – a title that had mainly ceremonial value in Alderaan's peaceful democratic society, but commanded considerable respect nonetheless. Her uncle Raymus had worked closely with Bail on Coruscant, as captain of his personal guard, and other members of the family had dispersed into galactic politics and banking. They possessed a wide reach and great influence – and yet had remained upstanding and moral for it all. That was rarer than an honest Twi'lek, as the saying went.

Any children of theirs would bear the honorific of _prince _or _princess, _but Bail had started to give up hope for them. However much he would have loved a son or daughter, Breha was barren. This had caused some consternation as to who would inherit the title, the wealth, and the grand palace in Aldera, the planet's capital city.

"Breha," said Bail again. "What's the matter?"

She paused. "I heard – rumors, Bail, terrible things. I heard that the Supreme Chancellor authorized a very controversial method of war, and that his supporters were..." She trailed off. "Never mind. You're all right."

"_Tell me," _said Bail.

"That his supporters were...blackmailing and physically attacking everyone who spoke out against the measure," said Breha quietly. "That they told them they could be brought up before the courts on a charge of treason."

"It wouldn't matter then," said Bail bleakly. The freezing knot inside him had coiled into a snake. "The Chancellor _is _the courts. He's passed laws to make the judges nothing but costume jewelry, and whoever he wants convicted is convicted. The Republic is a porcelain vase – pretty to look at, but empty and fragile."

Breha sounded shocked. "You can't say the _Separatists _are better!"

"I'm not," said Bail, tears stinging his eyes. "I'm saying that this bureaucratic mess may have no solutions at all."

He did something he knew he shouldn't have, and clicked the comlink off. He knew that her contacting him had been borne of worry and love, and she had sincerely been trying to warn him, and, but he could not speak to anyone, not even his wife. Bail was worried sick about Coruscant, the Republic, the war, and a thousand other things, and he could not for the life of him see how this could end well.

* * *

Breha Organa was right on one account. Coruscant was losing control.

There had never been an official announcement of the authorization of genophon – it was simply common knowledge in the Senate that such an agreement had been reached. Several coalitions had already formed in an attempt to force the Chancellor to make the information public. They had been smilingly and unquestioningly rebuffed. This was war, they were told, and you do _not _disclose ahead of time your use of such a sensitive procedure.

The Senators, defeated, had been forced to see the sense in this. Privately, they congregated and worried, wondering how the Jedi Council could agree to this. Why hadn't Master Kenobi told them? He was their most important link to the world of galactic politics. _And _their Order had suffered some of the gravest casualties in the war – they deserved to know. This went completely against their ideology. Why hadn't the Chancellor told them? Had he, and they had let him do it anyway? It seemed completely unthinkable.

A few of the more skeptical Senators proposed a delegation be sent to the Temple at once. They gathered in the empty Grand Audience Chamber, long after their peers had quit the premises and gone home to regroup. They sat dispersed in a few floating boxes, which had been organized into a ragtag row, and deployed all their combined security forces in order to grant their meeting a modicum of privacy.

Padmé had no real security forces, but she did have Threepio, who was unsurpassed at serving drinks. Fortunately, the protocol droid was back in her quarters with Moteé and Ellé. The Senators were too absorbed in arguing to care for refreshment.

"There is no debate," said Bail. "We must tell the Jedi." He looked straight at Padmé. "You are closer to the Order than us, my lady. Might I be so bold as to suggest...?"

Padmé bit her lip. She wanted to tell him that Anakin was gone, as was Obi-Wan, and she had only distant relationships with the remaining Council members. But she couldn't. There remained the small matter of knowing all the intricacies of what Anakin had assured her was a very secret mission to Muunilinst.

"Where is Master Kenobi?" said aging, fretful Fang Zar. "Why has he not said anything? If he has been deployed to the war again, no one has heard of it."

_No one except me, _Padmé said, silently.

"He was nearly killed on Jabiim and Rattatak. Perhaps he's still recovering," said graceful, auburn-haired Mon Mothma.

"It's been almost four months. He's had bacta treatment, and the Force," said Zar.

Bail slapped the arm of his chair. "No more debating. We must tell the Jedi Council."

"I will send them an envoy," said Fang Zar.

"As will I, if you wish," said Mon Mothma.

"We all will," said Bail heavily. "Palpatine can't do this. It goes against everything he has professed to stand for, every moral code the Republic had upheld – everything, in short, that distinguishes us from the Separatists."

Padmé spoke up. "I will oversee that, if you wish. If everyone would like to arrange their envoys, I will ensure they have the Council's ear." _I have no idea how, as my Jedi husband is off on the deathtrap called Muunilinst, but I'm sure I can figure it out._

Bail looked at her gratefully. "That would be well, my lady. You seem to have a certain rapport with them."

Padmé nodded, and did not mention that her only link was far away, undoubtedly being fired on and chased, wrung through every conceivable torture. But she tried not to think of that. Instead, she rose when the meeting was through, thanked her companions, and retreated to her quarters. Her head had been hurting all day.

Moteé offered her a cup of warm juice, but Padmé waved it away. She had had little appetite lately, which she attributed to her worrying. She had to keep her wits about her, to present the confident façade that had characterized Senator Amidala forever.

Padmé had decided early on not to return Anakin Skywalker's love. Their careers did not allow for such a perilous romance. But, slowly, she had been swayed, until in a moment before seemingly certain death in the arena at Geonosis, she had looked into his eyes and realized the futility of it. Shortly after their escape, they had been married on Naboo. For better or worse, this was the life Padmé had chosen.

In public they maintained a careful appearance of polite, purely professional acquaintance. It amused her, in a bizarre way, to hear him address her as "Senator Amidala," and her speaking to "Anakin Skywalker," when what she desperately wanted was to run to her Annie and kiss him.

But she could not. She could never, until their schedules verged together and he snuck away from the Temple and came to her again. In this cold-hearted, ever more deceitful and divisive world, trapped in a war that looked never to end, she had begun to live almost solely for those moments.

"Will m'lady be needing anything else?" Moteé asked.

"No." Padmé closed her eyes. The symmetry of the moment did not escape her, but there was no chance of Anakin coming tonight. "Wake me if something goes wrong, that's all. Get some rest."

* * *

Padmé was never woken, but it came close. Her sleep was uneasy and restless as it was, but at least she did not see what went on in Coruscant's skies that night. The Chancellor's order had split the bureaucrats in two. Half stood stoutly with him, and the other half was more uneasy than ever, secretly sympathizing with the plot to reveal it to the Jedi._ After all, if the Jedi can't help, who can?_

Always unspoken, the threat of mutiny hung in the air like a noxious stench, poisoning hearts and minds, twisting perceptions, severing long-held ties and values. The weed of suspicion was growing into – almost – open defiance. No one dared expose the fault lines in the Republic just yet – the Separatists lurked in every shadow, the propagators of every baseless threat. Learning of a very real weakness would give them their chance to strike.

Moteé and Ellé sat together in Padmé's lush drawing room, one side of which was open to the air, and watched the nightmare unfold. On the horizon, eager flames snapped and snarled, gauzing the sky with smoke. Squadrons of fireships streaked onsite, trying their best to douse them before they spread.

Moteé and Ellé looked at each other, nervous. They resembled each other, and their mistress, so closely that the three of them could all be sisters. Their hands found each other, fingers hooking together. The cool night wind blew in their faces, bringing with it the stench of madness.

Even from here, they could hear the sounds of yelling – this particular commotion came from two speeders tangled together just below balcony level. They could not discern what exactly the argument was about, but it seemed to be one faction accusing another of treason for undermining the Chancellor.

They did not see what provoked it, but they did see its end. One drew a blaster pistol and fired a single shot. His adversary fell without a sound, tumbling out of the speeder and down through several thousand meters of empty air.

Ellé let out a small whimper. "Should I wake m'lady?" she whispered to Moteé.

"No, don't bring her into this," the other handmaiden whispered back. "She was one of the main Senators arranging to flout the Chancellor's orders... it was sensible enough to tell the Jedi, but _this _doesn't resemble sense at all." Moteé jabbed a finger at the orange-black sky, smeared with the fires started by the competing rioting factions. "_This_ looks like anarchy."

Ellé squeezed her hand in what she hoped was a comforting way, but both of them felt icy cold, naked, and terribly exposed. They sat in silence, shrinking back against the silken cushions, as the sounds of conflict blew in the breeze from every corner of Galactic City. In several years of oftentimes violent disagreement to Palpatine's increasingly stringent policies, it had never come to outright blows.

After a long time, Moteé whispered, "I wish Anakin Skywalker was here."

Ellé agreed. Padmé's husband frightened her with his fiery temper and his reckless manner, but he was also a Jedi, sworn to protect the weak and the defenseless. If Anakin was here, he of the unmatched saber skills, she would feel much better – but in a way, all this chaos had stemmed from his absence.

After what felt like years, the last of the fires winked out, and Coruscant sank into the uneasy silence of sedition. Moteé and Ellé breathed out for the first time all night when ten minutes had passed without the sound of another klaxon. Their nerves were shot and they were aching with cold.

"Let the Senator sleep," Moteé said, after a long while. "And we don't need to tell her what we saw. We _must, _however, tell her to be careful."

"I think _she_ already knows, and will do her best," Ellé answered quietly. "_I_ don't know that anyone is safe." She shook her head. "I don't even know what the Republic has become. Oh, I wish that Anakin was here. Not only because of the riots, but because he makes her happy." She paused. "She's a different woman when she's with him, and it makes him... gentler. I wonder where he is. I don't suppose the war is treating him kindly."

Moteé nodded, and they rose together and hurried inside. The relative peace outside their windows was soothing, but neither could sleep. Memories of the cracks of dissent widening into chasms of open rebellion haunted their heads and stalked their dreams when they finally, unwillingly, came.


	16. Pain

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN**

**Pain**

As a matter of fact, Anakin Skywalker was currently plunging through a tangled network of exhaust ports, freezing himself solid in the process, occasionally slamming into something hard or sharp, clawing in the darkness for the next drop whenever he landed on something. He seemed to be slamming through the bunker's entire ventilation system, shaft by shaft and bruise by bruise, amassing an impressive collection of scars in the process.

_I'll admit, _Anakin thought, _this __was _not _one of my better ideas._

He slithered headfirst down yet another vent, scraping his flesh hand and scuffing his durasteel one, thrashing himself free when his cloak snagged. He had no idea where he was or of anything else; he was only drawn downwards by instinct and gravity. It was so cold that he could feel his sweat freezing on his face.

Anakin licked cracked lips and thrust himself down. He reached out, sensing the drop an instant before he tumbled over it. For several terrifying seconds, he fell free in pitch-black air, then crashed onto a plasteel surface with a bone-crushing clatter.

Anakin lay there in agony, cursing his own impatience. Then, dizzy, he sat up, and forced his blurry eyes to focus. Thank the Force, it looked as if he had somehow escaped from the ventilation shafts. A vast, twilit room spread out around him.

Anakin, excited by his apparent success in infiltrating the bunker, shot to his feet. This was decidedly ill-advised –a scream of pain erupted through him and he fell heavily back to the floor. It took several minutes to recuperate, and he tried again with far more caution.

This time, it worked, somewhat. Anakin blew on his freezing hand, and slapped his cheeks and arm to restore feeling. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Anakin checked that all essential components were present and in somewhat working order.

Lightsaber, brain, arms, legs – he seemed to be passable for now. Pulling his cloak over his head and trying desperately not to shiver, Anakin set off across the room at an unsteady gallop. He didn't know what was going on precisely, but a part of him was vicariously pleased at having a chance to prove his worth on such a dangerous mission as this. Perhaps, at _long _last, the Jedi Council would realize his worth and grant him the seat among their number that he so desperately craved.

Anakin kept out a sharp sense for droids, sentries, remotely-accessed turbolasers, or any other traps of the fatal variety, but even his deepest probes found nothing. This bunker seemed deserted. Had he mentioned yet that he was freezing?

"Where are you, Asajj?" Anakin asked aloud. "Where are you hiding? You hurt Obi-Wan, and it's personal between us. If it's a fight, you'll find I'm good at that."

He felt childish speaking to empty walls, but the Sith-spawn had to be here _somewhere. _He was more than expecting her to leap out from a corner, lightsaber blazing.

Here and there, Anakin found sentries, but they seemed deactivated, which was a good thing. Giant hunks of durasteel and weaponry, their turbolasers and sensor banks were sharp enough to track even Force-enhanced movements of Jedi. They could have blown him to ragged hunks if they had chosen, but they were silent.

The bunker had been clearly scoured clean. The rooms were steel-walled and pristine, the floors empty, all the control panels either locked in unbreakable standby or gashed open, spilling tangles of wires and therefore useless. The glowtubes were flickering and faulty, and Anakin wished now that he'd waited for Obi-Wan. But chasing down Ventress by himself... that would surely be a feat.

Nonetheless, he was alone here, and he didn't know the way out.

Anakin resolutely forced the word _trapped _out of his head.

* * *

Asajj circled the cliff face warily, a silencer on her speeder and a cloaking cast over her presence in the Force. Lord Tyranus had contacted her to tell her the location of the Separatists' bunker. It was there, he told her, that she must lure the Jedi.

And so, after this long wild-bantha chase, here she was, lying in wait, hoping that the Jedi would incarcerate themselves of their own accord – or more accurately, that one of them would. Once he was trapped, _then _she would slide in too. There would be nothing to interfere there, no clones or droids. Just him. Just her. Jedi versus Sith, the way it always ended.

Once or twice, her imperfect cloaking had slipped, and then Kenobi and Skywalker had caught brief whispers of her presence. On one such occasion, Skywalker had angrily ignited his lightsaber, haloing the two Jedi in a perimeter of blue fire. If she _had _wanted to fire on them, it would have been easy.

And then again, she might not have done so at all. Asajj disliked blasters and turbolasers. They were too clumsy and too common, not at all the delicate balance of a lightsaber, and their shots were too uncontrolled. Even a raw beginner, if they squeezed the trigger enough, might conceivably find their mark. The same, attempting to use a lightsaber, would invariably slice off their own head or arm.

Asajj returned her attention to the moment. Nightfall on Muunilinst. She had watched it a handful of times since her arrival on the planet, and despite herself, she grudgingly anticipated it. On the rare occasions that the thick clouds cleared, the sky would be a deep crimson, splashed with sublight stains and battle-scars, and the air would thrum as giant cruisers passed overhead. Vivid trails of sparks would plunge earthward, escorted by an honor guard of meteors, until the great, ancient sun groaned away over the horizon and out of sight.

And now it was utterly black. Muunilinst was so isolated that only a handful of stars punched through the crystal sky, and even those had been erased. Asajj, dressed in black, and her speeder, silenced and hidden, barely pierced the thick murk of night. She had to keep her senses on constant guard to navigate without crashing into something, or giving her presence away entirely.

It was dark, and she had not dared to stretch out too far with the Force, so she could not tell if both Jedi were still outside. It was possible, however unlikely, that the idiots would actually stumble over the entrance hatch.

Asajj banked the speeder and drifted gently, resisting the urge to blow on her exposed fingers. Once the sun went down, the surface temperature on Muunilinst dropped to freezing levels. Clones, the thinking flesh core inside impervious plasteel armor, and droids, resilient to almost everything, battled on undeterred.

She was growing tired of waiting. That was all she had done ever since she had arrived. Waiting for the Jedi, waiting for them to trap themselves. She was ready for a fight; it had been too long. Sitting quietly, letting everyone else make the moves, was not something the Sith liked or were used to.

Asajj was eager to cross blades with Obi-Wan Kenobi. She had captured him once before, but she'd been too busy torturing him to get a chance to spar him. It was a regrettable mistake, and she hoped it would shortly be rectified. Everyone claimed that Master Kenobi was one of the unsurpassed duelists of the Order, but Asajj doubted it. The only form he knew intricately was the common Soresu, which every Padawan learned, and it was simple – deflect and parry, using the opponent's own kinetic energy against them. Nothing fancy.

Almost every Jedi went on to learn a different form to supplement Soresu's inherent weaknesses. She was sure that with her skills – she had been trained personally in Lord Tyranus' elegant Makashi, which, through him, had defeated both Kenobi and Skywalker easily – that it would be a short-lived contest.

Asajj dared to nudge her speeder closer. "_Come on,_" she whispered, ghostly in the night. _"Come on, Jedi. You don't want to spoil this game for me."_

* * *

Infiltrating a cliff-bound enemy bunker in the dead of night, in uniformly freezing temperatures, was not as easy as it looked.

There was absolutely no way that Obi-Wan planned to repeat Anakin's dramatic plunge through the vents. Part of him was sure that his partner was currently lying in bloody shreds somewhere below, or fettered up in a Separatist dungeon, but the rest of him shoved that morbid fancy aside and concentrated on breaking in.

It was so cold that it took Obi-Wan's breath away. He constantly had to stop and blow on numbed, freezing hands, and the rock scraped skin off palms and knuckles. Completely blind, utterly dependent on the Force, Obi-Wan crawled up a short cliff. He paused a second for breath, then reached back for even more deeply buried energy reserves and pressed on.

A long while later, his hands skimmed across metal. Since the blood had long since frozen solid in them, he had to warm them in his armpits before he was sure of what he was touching. A door, large enough to walk through if he stooped, had been cunningly built into the cliff, mortared together with a thousand code-locks.

Obi-Wan stood there, pondering this new dilemma. He wondered if there was a hidden trigger somewhere – there had to be, to let them in – or if he should just take his lightsaber out and cut his way in. As befitted his nature, the first choice was more appealing, but he might shatter into icy pieces if he took much longer.

A faint rumble shook the ground. Obi-Wan was aware that _something, _perhaps five meters short,had just swooped past him with enough velocity to trace a sharp gust of air against his cheek. He whirled, peering into the frosty, impenetrable night.

Still nothing, but not because there was no reason to be alarmed. Another rumble, this one longer and more pronounced, stirred a dangerous cascade of rocks a yard to Obi-Wan's right, and he winced as a splinter stung his cheek.

Unnerved, Obi-Wan turned back to the door, running his hands over the plated durasteel. He was running out of time. He needed to find a way in, reunite with Anakin, and then plan the assault from there –

Obi-Wan was spared the effort of any more decision-making by a violent crack of thunder – or so he thought. No lightning had split the seamless black shell of the sky, and besides, no thunder had ever come from the _ground –_

Blinding white strobes of light slashed the darkness, so sudden and intense that Obi-Wan thought for certain that it _was _a thunderstorm, and he was about to be the recipient of a sudden and thorough drenching – the last thing he needed right now. But that suspicion blew to shreds the next second. These lights, whatever else they were, were entirely earthbound.

Then Obi-Wan saw what they were, and despite all his training, all his discipline, all his experience, a cold coil of terror slithered into his throat. The sentries had activated.

They emerged from the cliff one by one, side by side, as if the rock was synthskin and could be split to birth them. They were huge, primitive, apparently carved from the craggy rocks. A malign, alien light sparked in their deep, strangely sentient gaze, and panels of controls flittered on what Obi-Wan supposed were their chests. Their hands were huge, enough to crush him with one blow. He sincerely hoped that their mobility was limited, but that didn't matter considering their firepower.

Dual disruptors had been built into each arm on each sentry – there were at least six of them. Obi-Wan swallowed. Disruptors had been originally intended for droids and clones – their pulsing electrical currents fried non-organics and organics alike, cooking them in a shroud of sizzling blue energy. The good news was that Jedi weren't this bunker's typical foes. The bad news was that it was entirely irrelevant.

Obi-Wan could think of only one explanation. The trap had acquired the Jedi bait it had wanted – Anakin – and now its steel jaws had been programmed to kill the spare: him. _Oh, Anakin, _Obi-Wan thought uselessly. The odds were astronomical that his former Padawan was currently a prisoner of Asajj Ventress. It didn't matter much, as he was not likely to live long enough to join him in her grasp.

He did the only thing he could think of. He drew his lightsaber.

At once, the sentries' massive heads rotated to track him, stone grinding against stone. Obi-Wan realized the certainty of his own death, but no one had ever said that he would not go down fighting.

The first sentry squeezed off a gout of iridescent energy. Obi-Wan was already moving, throwing himself into a somersault behind a boulder as the vaporized wash blew atomized stone particles into the air. The second bolt followed in quick succession, and Obi-Wan rolled the other way, flattening out into an acrobatic dive that just barely took him out of its path.

There was a five-second respite, barely long enough for Obi-Wan to get his wind back. Then the second sentry fired, two blasts one after the other, pulverizing boulders and shaking the ground. The intense flashes dazed his optic nerves, and glowing spots floated in front of his eyes.

Seven seconds pause. Then the third sentry's disruptors hurled crackling death.

The flying chunks of stone slammed into the boulder that Obi-Wan had dived behind. So there was a pattern – they shifted down the row, with two seconds added each time the firing point changed. He dashed in the opposite direction as hard as he could, but the disruptors' beams were set on such a broad spectrum that the heat scorched his back. Stray bursts fizzed and snarled. His frozen robe began to melt, making him shiver despite feeling as if a star had just gone critical at his back.

Obi-Wan sprinted desperately, throwing himself into headlong rolls, tasting blood in his mouth. He clawed his way up the cliff, barely missed by a blast that melted the stone beneath his feet to superheated glass, and tumbled away.

Behind him, he still heard the sentries thundering in deadly sync, but slowly their combat algorithms deactivated as they lost sense of their target. Obi-Wan lay bruised and dazed, half-conscious, in a shallow, rocky ravine.

_Can't go back that way, _he thought. _Can't stay there long enough...the sentries would vaporize me before I got the chance to open the entrance port._

After several seconds, he sat up unsteadily and looked around. The hollow boom of the disruptors had gone silent, but smoke was gusting up just beyond the ravine. Obi-Wan spat out a mouthful of blood and gingerly felt his face; he might have shattered one cheekbone, but he was barely aware of the pain. He got to his feet, briefly paused with his head between his knees, and drew a deep, painful breath.

What he really needed was time to recuperate, forge his way back to the Deltas and return with guns blazing – but there wasn't time. Obi-Wan's throat clenched. He was not going to leave Anakin to Ventress' tender mercies, having had extensive experience with them himself.

He began to pick his way out of the dark, rocky cleft. He was still stunned, but considering the alternative – being blown to smoking chunks – he thought that he had gotten the undisputed better choice.

At last, Obi-Wan found the way out, and leaned against a rock in relief. He had spent the entire night battling free, it seemed – the horizon was limned in crimson. He dimly recalled that Muunilinst's days were far longer than its nights.

He stopped to gaze back at the bunker, and for a moment, he almost gave in. How could he leave Anakin there alone, when the mission had been for _both _of them? If he lost him through his cowardice in facing the sentries, he would never forgive himself.

But there was no fighting those things. Jedi had a strong survival instinct as much as anything, and it was not yet his time. Rejuvenated by this decision, Obi-Wan reached out through the Force, located the energy-signatures of the starfighters, and set out as fast as he could in that direction. He felt heartened. Soon, he would return for Anakin, and they would eliminate Ventress together. _Kenobi and Skywalker _had always been together. They were the Jedi Order's unbeatable, unbreakable team, and neither saw any reason why that should change.

If they could just survive one more time.

* * *

Asajj brought her speeder spiraling into a graceful dive, then cut the engines. She swung her leg over the side and stood, peering warily into the darkness ahead, blinking a few times to clear the daze of the disruptors from her eyes. The sentries had been programmed to activate as soon as the Jedi tripped a hidden switch – _inside _the bunker. This meant that one of them had found their way in, and if everything had gone according to plan, it would be Kenobi.

Asajj pushed back her hood, letting the cold night air sting her bare skull. She drew a deep breath and stretched her limber body beneath the supple gloss of armor and leather. She felt calm, confident, prepared. Now was the moment. There was no way out of this bunker once it had gone into lockdown. The Jedi Master trapped inside had no help. She could hunt him down at her leisure.

She checked that everything was accounted for, then smiled, left the speeder where it was, and descended quietly down a shallow tunnel. Set at the end of it, in a narrow rocky crevice, was a metal door, studded with access controls.

Her fingers lightly tapped out her personal code, and the door whooshed aside with the hiss of hydraulics. She slipped inside, and it closed behind her instantly.

Asajj crept through an entrance chute. The floor was laid in slick plasteel and the walls were neuranium, rendering the building invisible to all but the most supernaturally advanced sensor systems. A Republic troopship could fly directly overhead and their scanners would never pick it up. The thought amused her.

She stopped at an overhanging balcony and looked down, down, down, to the floor far below – sure enough, barely distinguishable, there was the brown-robed figure of a Jedi. Asajj smiled and turned away, bending low to slip into another tunnel. Here, the open door of a turbolift awaited her, so she stepped inside, glissaded the doors shut, and glanced at the button for floor level. Immediately, with a quiet, whining purr, the durasteel pod began to descend.

She was so excited about the upcoming fight that she could barely keep her focus. At last, Master Kenobi's ultimate challenge, and ultimate end. It would be a martyr's death for the Jedi general – expiring in a dramatic fight against a Sith was about as heroic as they came.

As what was to be done with Skywalker, well, that was the only question. Sooner or later he would find his way into Sidious' grip, but Asajj wondered what good that would do him. Lord Tyranus had sworn that he would overthrow Sidious first.

The turbolift thrummed to a halt, and the doors parted. Smiling, confident, Asajj strode out into the high durasteel arena, passing the mute sentries, giving nods to all the sensor panels which had tripped the trap just as she and her Master had planned, turned the corner to lay eyes on her foe – and stopped in horror.

"What," said Anakin Skywalker defiantly, "were you expecting someone else?"

* * *

Trekking as quickly as he could, Obi-Wan managed to put a fair distance between himself and the bunker by noon. The sun was balanced at the zenith of the sky, which only meant that the light was a thicker red and the radiation was creeping even higher. He was in a state of constant temperature flux. One moment he was unbearably hot, and the next second he was freezing to death.

The short nights and long days had began to disorient Obi-Wan, as it was often hard to tell which was which. The planet was cloaked in suffocating twilight until it abruptly went utterly black, in which state it remained until the lumbering sun hauled itself up over the ragged horizon and the entire process began again.

Obi-Wan was not thinking clearly. The crack on his head from his adventure with the sentries, his long march, and his deep exhaustion had finally begun to do the unthinkable to a Jedi, and cloud his judgment. All he knew was that he had to reach the Deltas and get back to Anakin.

Time slipped by. Obi-Wan forced himself to keep moving, oftentimes literally. The horizon boiled off its edges and engulfed him in a red sandstorm. He drew his sodden robe over his mouth and plowed on, as inexorable as a battle cruiser.

Finally, blessedly, the shapes of the starfighters appeared just ahead of him. Obi-Wan stumbled all the way up to his, at which point he toppled into the cockpit and lay prone, staring up at the vast sky above. He slipped in and out of reality, losing the vise-tight grip that all Jedi kept on their emotions and reactions. He gave himself up to the whims of the universe, drifting through a strata of shadow and dream, until at last he brought his mind to a single focusing point again.

Obi-Wan sat up. He had no idea how long it had been, and this made him ashamed for failing Anakin at such a critical juncture. Wasting no time, he set his comm to a secure, scrambled frequency and entered a brief code.

His sensor array whined as it strained to band the galaxy with the signal. At last, it patched through, and the small blue hologram of Mace Windu resolved itself on his dashboard. "Master Kenobi." The permanent furrow between Mace's eyes had been trenched even deeper. "What is the situation?"

"Muunilinst is a madhouse of a planet," said Obi-Wan flatly. "I am calling to report to you that Anakin – Anakin has fallen into the grip of Ventress, or at the very least, that of the Separatists. I am informing you that I am going to reconnoiter with the clones and lead a party back to rescue him."

Mace Windu frowned. "And you think this...wise? You are _informing _me?" He lingered briefly over Obi-Wan's apparently pretentious use of the word. "Master Kenobi, I have always trusted your judgment, but...why you? Send the troops."

"Master. Anakin is – was – my Padawan," said Obi-Wan.

"As I was once Yoda's. I know your concern for the boy, Obi-Wan, but a Jedi does not form attachment."

"I _know, _Master," said Obi-Wan, his irritation and exhaustion making him waspish.

"Since you do, I know you will understand, then." Mace lifted haunted dark eyes. "Kenobi, I am not trying to cause you pain. But I am forbidding you to go after Skywalker."

Silence rang across the galaxy for a very long, torturous second.

Obi-Wan recovered first. "No. You cannot do that. Never."

"Yes, I can. Obi-Wan, you must understand that we need you. And the clone troops we sent to Muunilinst are particularly able – if they weren't, they wouldn't be alive. I am not yet sure that we were not manipulated into this entire mission." He paused. "And besides. Anakin Skywalker is the Chosen One."

"_I know." _Obi-Wan could not believe what he was hearing.

"And therefore...if it is indeed his destiny to bring balance to the Force, he _will _find a way, possibly without you. I speak of trust, Obi-Wan. Trust in Skywalker."

"Which you have advocated me against doing thousands of times," said Obi-Wan recklessly, realizing that at the moment, he sounded very much like Anakin. "You speak of destiny, of trust. Master, no matter the shadowy political implications, we were sent to Muunilinst _together. _I cannot leave Anakin to deal with Ventress alone."

"Your former Padawan is an exceptionally able lightsaber duelist, I recall."

"_Master_!" Obi-Wan exploded. "I do not mean _fighting_, I mean what she could _say! _You, I, and every other Jedi knows that Anakin is _volatile_, and that the Sith are – " He couldn't finish that, couldn't voice that utter, unspoken fear. With a great effort, he brought his voice under control. "Ask me anything, Master, but not that."

Mace Windu's ghost considered for a long moment. "I understand, Kenobi, but I will not let you. Send the clones to his aid, by all means. But not you. Please."

There was something in his voice that frightened Obi-Wan. Master Windu, second greatest of the Jedi besides Yoda himself, was pleading.

Obi-Wan, for the first time, could not bring himself to do as he had done all his life, and submit to the authority of the Council, the Code, the Masters. "Master Windu, I understand. But I disagree. I will send the clones to him, and I will go with them."

Before Mace could answer, Obi-Wan terminated the transmission.

He was giddy, he was aghast, he was disbelieving at his own sheer audacity. He had never done that.

And he had never been in such danger of losing Anakin, either.


	17. Clash

**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN**

**Clash**

"You," said Asajj, rooted in her tracks.

"Me." Skywalker's gait was slow, measured, dangerous. He never took his eyes off her, falling into the circling prowl of a predator. "This bunker trap was very clever, I'm sure. Where's Obi-Wan?"

"_Master_ Kenobi?" said Asajj, deriding. "I can think of thousands of things I can do besides looking for dead Jedi."

For a second, Anakin's composure slipped. "You – you're lying. Obi-Wan wouldn't. He – he can't. He's _not._"

Asajj shrugged again. "I don't suppose anyone told you?" she said lightly. "I had a Jedi Master once too. Ky Narec, that was his name. And you do know, for all his greatness as a warrior, he died just as well."

Skywalker stared at her. "You were Ky Narec's Padawan?"

"You knew him?" said Asajj. She wondered why in the world she was standing here making small talk with him, when she needed to leave him trapped, track down Kenobi, and ensure that he was dead.

"I knew that he was a great warrior, and that he was killed," said Anakin. "I never heard what became of his Padawan."

"Jedi die just like commoners," said Asajj dismissively. In a way, however, she wished she had not mentioned Narec. No matter how useful it was to harangue Skywalker with, it remained her secret wound. Even Lord Tyranus did not know.

Anakin stared at her with barely veiled hate – not at all a Jedi-sanctioned emotion, but she had no argument. When he was calm and focused, Skywalker could beat her. All she had to do was do as her Master had done, and goad him until he lost control.

"You left the Jedi Order after your Master died?" said Anakin.

"Yes," said Asajj. "You will soon understand the symmetry of it."

Skywalker's face twisted. Still, he kept a tight rein on his voice, forcing it to neutrality. "If you mean me, there are a few drawbacks. First of all, my Master _is not dead_. Second of all, I am not as self-serving as you. I would never betray the Jedi."

"Brave words, Skywalker. Empty." Asajj took another step forward, hands still open, but fluttering close to her lightsaber.

His eyes were smoldering with fury, but his voice was deceptively calm. "What do you want with me?"

"I didn't want you," said Asajj. "As a matter of fact I wanted your Master, since I intended to finish the job of killing him. Your places were supposed to be exchanged. You are worthless to me, and as a matter of fact, worthless to everyone except – a great lord. You should be pleased."

"I – am not – _worthless!"_ Skywalker snarled. "They call me the Hero With No Fear! I've won dozens – _hundreds_ – of battles! By _myself!"_

"But you do have a fear, don't you?" said Asajj silkily. "That you're not good enough? That the Council will do to you as they did to me, and exile you?"

For a second, the full impact of his rage and hatred shone out of the twin furnaces of his eyes, and it was almost enough to make her recoil. Almost. "The Council," he growled, "did not _exile_ you. You chose to leave out of your own cowardice."

"Oh, but there you're wrong, Skywalker. I broke one of their most fundamental rules – two of them, in fact, and they proclaimed they could no longer trust me."

"Oh, really?" Anakin bit back. "Can't blame them, seeing as you've ended up as worthless, backstabbing scum."

Asajj's own anger flared. "Silence! I will not be taunted by _you_, you worthless, childish little _boy!_ To think they called you the Chosen One – yes, _called_, Skywalker, I do not give a bloody _damn_ what might have been intended for you – I am going to kill you and make a clean sweep of the _Jedi_ on Muunilinst."

She took two swift steps forward. The anger that fueled the Sith was pulsing in her breast, coiling up into her throat, a sick dragon of rage and dread. She culled her strength from it, forging herself into a weapon.

Skywalker's blue lightsaber sprang from his belt and into his hand with almost preternatural speed. "I'm not going to be the one to die here."

Asajj smiled. It might not be Kenobi, but Anakin Skywalker was not at all a bad foe to prove her prowess against. Her grasp was still empty, but only for half a heartbeat. A second later, a scarlet fountain of energy gushed from her hand.

"You think a red lightsaber makes you a Sith?" said Anakin. "You're not. You're just a Force-user, who's too selfish to be a Jedi and too useless to be a Sith. _I'm_ not the worthless one." He smiled, baring his teeth.

"I said, be _silent_." Asajj could barely contain her fury. On one hand, this was good, as it would give her the advantage in the upcoming, inevitable fight. But she had never counted on losing control as badly as she was about to.

Anakin's lightsaber sprang up and slid away, testing. "So, what rules did you break? Did the Jedi Council refuse to kiss your skinned knee?"

"No!" Asajj shouted, and her voice rang in the silence. The only other sound was the crackle of lightsabers. They circled, blades locked, staring poison at the other.

Asajj reversed her lightsaber from the gridlock and slashed low. Skywalker expertly angled his blade to receive the strike and cut hard right, trying to force her lightsaber to her shoulder, but she pulled away and flipped backwards, landing on her feet. "Come on, Skywalker," she growled. "Come on, give me a fight. But you won't match me. I can use _anger_, you see. What do you have to give you strength? All those Kenobi platitudes you hate so much?"

"I am stronger than him," said Skywalker.

"Oh, excellent," said Asajj breezily. "Then his death won't bother you at all."

She had finally found the breaking point. Skywalker gave a hoarse scream of fury and lunged forward. A second later, he was on top of her, hammering furiously as their lightsabers snapped and sang, crackles of energy intermingling, sky-blue and blood-crimson. He was skilled indeed, but his fury made him clumsy, made him lose his edge. Still, he was bigger and stronger than her, and if she let him control the fight for too long, it was possible he could get the advantage.

So she retaliated with trickery. When Skywalker swung at her head, she ducked and spun down into a quick ankle sweep. Skywalker slashed at her back, and she felt the energy singe her armored vest, but then she was already gone, darting around, forcing him to turn to find her.

Asajj's lightsaber spat upwards, biting for his heart. Anakin swatted it aside almost contemptuously and tried another battle-droid lunge. Asajj spun to the left, feinted right, and came at him center, her blade briefly snapping his guard. Then his lightsaber slammed against hers, hard enough to force her to give ground.

She flipped backwards again, three times, and landed on a narrow access pathway. While Skywalker was wasting time by charging her, she plunged her blade deep into the control panel, and was rewarded as the vast warehouse sputtered into inky blackness. All she could see of Anakin was his glowing lightsaber. Half a second later, it crashed against hers, and then Skywalker's furious face was visible behind it.

Asajj knew that if she stayed in one place, he could use sheer physical strength to overwhelm her. Even furious, off his pace, he was a formidable foe. She began to wish, again, that she'd had Kenobi instead.

So she altered her strategy. She never stayed in the same place. She forced Skywalker to move with her as she whirled through a configuration of leaps and ducks, rolls and jumps. He stayed with her, at first, but she could see him beginning to weary.

And then, like the cunning warrior he was, he altered his strategy as well. He refused to come to her, refused to let her dictate their terms. Instead, he stayed in one place, lightsaber whirring in a flashing circle around him, daring her to charge him, forcing her to expend energy instead of vice versa.

Their lightsabers parted and met and parted and clashed again, spitting sparks, coruscating in alternating thrusts. And yet, neither of them seemed to be able to reach the other. Asajj's muscles were shaking in fatigue, but she was never going to let him walk away from this.

"So," Skywalker said again, breathless and furious. "What did you do?"

Asajj thought that one more taunt might be able to swing the fight in her favor. "Do you want to know?" she sneered. "I broke the rule about _attachment_. That's right, Skywalker. I displeased your darling Jedi by daring to love something, someone besides the Force. They thought I was a threat, that my precious _judgment_ might be clouded, that I was selfish. In fact, I realized that _they_ were selfish."

Skywalker responded by spitting, accurately, in her face, and Asajj roared in wordless fury. Her lightsaber whirled again, crashing against his. The heat in the room was beginning to grow, from both their exertion and the fact that she had disabled the cooling controls, and she fed it with the fire of her rage.

They faced each other, turning in a slow circle, lightsabers locked. "Was it true then?" Skywalker asked mockingly. "Was it as they whispered? You _loved_ Ky Narec, and when he was killed, you wanted revenge."

"Yes!" Asajj screamed. "That was the other rule I broke! I wanted _revenge!_ One day you may understand, Skywalker, the Jedi are blind and they are selfish and they are fragile and insecure enough that they do not trust you to love! Because they are afraid that they would _lose_ if they were put up against anything else!"

She had struck a nerve. Skywalker's roar shook the walls, and he battered her with an unstoppable stream of strikes and thrusts, his lightsaber crashing into hers with violent strength. Her arms shuddered with the effort of turning them back, but at the same time, he was growing sloppier, less focused. "I – can – love!" Skywalker screamed. "I am not like them!"

"You see?" said Asajj. "You've just proved my point."

They sparred back and forth, climbing and descending through a wheeling circle of platforms and hallways, never close enough to touch except through the interlocked snarl of lightsabers. Skywalker stumbled once, going down, and Asajj shrieked forward for the kill, her blade angling straight toward his exposed neck –

Only then Skywalker_ sensed_ it, and rolled backwards so fast that she had to check her plunge; otherwise her lightsaber would have sunk deep into the durasteel flooring. While she was re-aiming, _his_ lightsaber came up; their blades clashed as he swung into her, and she dropped back and rolled.

Asajj revised her strategy, yet again. She stayed still and let him move, and when he did come at her, she cut and jabbed with short, intensely controlled strikes, each displacing his blade a fraction of a millimeter, trying to find a weak spot in the flawless, flashing blue-glow pattern. She tried to avoid his blows – they were hard enough to crumple her guard. In sheer physical power, he had the definite advantage. But he didn't have the dark side of the Force. Not yet.

Asajj, snarling, baring her teeth, ramped up the intensity. Crimson and cobalt tangled yet again, but Anakin's parries and counterattacks came a bit slower, a bit more laboriously. His lightsaber did not rise so high or dart so fast, and that elusive crack in his defense seemed to be getting closer.

Finally – there it was. His blade slid aside at precisely the wrong moment, and hers was there in a fraction of a second. Sparks flashed as the blood scraped across the sky, and plunged straight toward its target.

If Anakin had stood to receive the blow, it would have taken half his head off. As it was, he jerked back just in time. The tip of Asajj's red blade etched a deep, smoking groove into the side of his face, and he cried out in pain. She had him wounded, it was time to finish him. He reeled back, still in fighting form but losing it, his eyes sparking fury. She had to grudgingly admire his tenacity, as she still saw no apparent weakness in him. He held his lightsaber low, his durasteel fingers brushing the steaming, blackened gash in his flesh.

Asajj lunged. Somehow, impossibly, Anakin managed to deflect the blow. Her lightsaber skidded off the slant of his and hissed to the floor, and he flipped his blade around underhanded and slammed it down on hers, pinning her.

The two of them lay sprawled flat, his lightsaber on top of hers, holding it down by strength and fury, as the red blade began to chew gouges out of the shining floor. Asajj twisted, but could not loosen herself; it would require her to let go of her lightsaber, and that, she was not willing to do.

"The Jedi Order betrayed me," she breathed in his face, as she struggled and kicked in a futile attempt to extricate herself. "They will do the same to you."

"No, they won't." He raised his lightsaber just a breath – she tried to jerk free, but then he crashed it down on her wrist again, hard enough that she heard bones splinter. "You'll die here, you Sith witch, and I'll live. I'll be a hero."

His free hand connected solidly with her jaw. Asajj smiled through the blinding pain, and spat blood on him. "_Love_ will betray you, Skywalker. Love, and your Order. You may think you are safe, but you are a fault line, a dark, unstable spirit they can't control, and your very presence is a complication. They don't trust you, they don't want you, and one day you'll find that out."

Skywalker swung again, and Asajj gave as good as she got. She intercepted the blow, twisted up over his back, and gripped his hips with her knees. Her arm was locked around his throat, and she sliced into the gash her lightsaber had made with her fingers, gouging the flesh.

Anakin screamed in agony, fury, both. He rolled away and she came with him; both held their lightsabers in low, jousting guards, feinting and thrusting, but never clashing. Both were injured, both were severely flagging, but this was Asajj's place. She knew a few things Skywalker didn't.

She skipped back into a tangled labyrinth of sensor and shield arrays. Anakin tried a sweeping overhead cut, and she skipped aside. Instead of her head, his blade bit into a chunk of knotted, sparking wire. Electrical currents flashed and crackled around him, and she heard him give a gasp of pain as he was flung bodily backwards. He crashed into the floor, hard, leaving a bright smear of blood.

Breathless, her wrist and jaw flaring with terrible pain, Asajj braced her good hand on her hip and looked down at him. This boy, this child, so young and wounded, struggling to rise, his clothes and hair smoking.

"Thank you for that, _Jedi_," said Asajj, her voice flooded with loathing as black and unending as Muunilinst night. "Thank you for proving once and for all that I did the right thing in leaving the Jedi path. You, self-righteous mercenaries selling your soul to whoever fits your ideals, butchering anyone who doesn't. Tell me how, in the end, are the Jedi better than the Sith?"

He didn't answer, and his face contorted in a rictus of hatred. She reached down and put her foot on his wrist, kicking his lightsaber free of his grasp and into a garbage compacter. The blade winked out of existence.

"I'm not going to be the one to kill you," said Asajj. "Not yet. Don't think you're going to escape, though. Ending you with a lightsaber would be too quick, and you don't deserve that." Her voice felt raw and bleeding in her throat. "I'm going to leave you, and ensure the galaxy knows the outcome of our fight. The _great, noble_ Jedi _lost_."

"Damn you," Anakin spat, more sparks crackling down him. He arched in agony.

"Thank you, there's no need. I lost my soul a long time ago." Asajj swallowed to keep back bile. "I loved Ky Narec. Love betrayed me. Love will betray you. And one more thing. When you buried your lightsaber in that control panel, you disabled the weapons regulators. This room was a time bomb, and you set the fuse. A full-scale explosion is set to be triggered in about – " she checked the nearest chronometer – "two standard hours. And there is no way out, I'll make quite sure of that."

She wanted to savor the sight of him lying there, beaten and defeated, but she couldn't. The pain from the injuries he had inflicted on her was almost unbearable. "However," she added, "I won't be the one suffering the most. In the end, Skywalker, your hurt will be greater."

And with that, she left him.

* * *

The first thing Obi-Wan did was to piece together an unstable transmission on the first secure comm channel he could find. He waited, listening tensely, until at last a digitized version of Jango Fett's voice clicked on. "Commander Alpha."

Obi-Wan let out a breath. "Alpha, it's General Kenobi. I need a location for you in relation to – " He tapped a code into his beacon pad.

"Scanning." Alpha was a clone, and his presence on Muunilinst meant that Obi-Wan's other favorite, Cody, had been sent elsewhere. Obi-Wan and Alpha had worked together on a number of missions, and had learned to trust each other, as much as anyone could in these tumultuous times. Alpha was as close to human as an artificially-manufactured, genetically-identical copy could ever be; he was creative, quick-witted, shrewd, and a keen military strategist – not to mention, he wasn't afraid to tease Obi-Wan on occasion, something no one besides Anakin ever did. However, if it came to combat against Ventress, he knew that Alpha ached for revenge. The clone had displayed unnatural bravery and selflessness, fighting back against her to spare Obi-Wan the worst of it.

A second later, Alpha's voice crackled back through the patchy static. "You've been located, General. What's the matter? Delta break down?"

Obi-Wan let out another breath. "No. I need you and your best – " he debated on whether to say men – "troops. He swallowed. "We've had a small calamity."

"What is it, General?" Alpha asked at once.

"Anakin has been – " Obi-Wan paused. "Captured by Asajj Ventress. She's taken him into an underground bunker, or rather he took himself down there and I'm sure she went to meet him, and we need to get him out."

"Skywalker? _Skywalker,_ the bridge brigade of firepower?"

"He did it on his own. He leapt down an exhaust chute." Obi-Wan shook his head tiredly, in a mixture of exasperation and amusement. "And now he's trapped there."

"I understand completely, General. We'll be at your position shortly. There's been a little trouble with some squatters over here; Muun rebels have been setting thermal detonators on half our _Jadthu_-landers." Alpha sounded frustrated. "To be fair, they wrecked half the Seps' deck guns too, but still. Hold your location. Alpha out."

Obi-Wan cut the transmission and leaned back in the chair. He couldn't see more than a few feet. Atmospheric murk and arid dirt had churned up into a horizon-veiling mess, shot through here and there with reddish light.

An interminable amount of time passed. Obi-Wan keyed in a few maintenance commands to Arfour, and then, just as he was about to get out and look around, a looming shadow fell over the Delta. Alpha's voice sounded through the comm. "We've got you in our crosshairs, General. Hold on and we'll bring you up."

"Acknowledged." Obi-Wan quickly slipped into his crash webbing. The clones and the tractor-beam controls had not quite yet learned to get along.

A second later, a disorienting feeling of weightlessness spread over him, and the ground fell away beneath the Delta's landing claws. Peering out the windscreen, Obi-Wan noticed that the clones had pulled up Anakin's starfighter as well. The pilot-less craft bumped and swayed alarmingly beside him, its dropfins scratching the chrome enamel on Obi-Wan's left wing. Arfour squawked a protest.

In a moment, the ride was over, and the sterile white hangar of the Republic troopship closed around him. Obi-Wan popped the cockpit and stepped out quickly, then stumbled. A clone offered him an arm, which Obi-Wan accepted until he regained his balance. "Thank you – ah – Kappa," he said, reading the engraved nameplate. "Where's Alpha?"

"Here, General." Alpha stepped into the harsh halogen light and slipped off his helmet, revealing Jango Fett's face, webbed with blast-scars and burns. He offered Obi-Wan an ironic smile. "Between you and me, I'd say that I look better."

Obi-Wan fingered his filth-encrusted beard. "You may have a point there." Between mud, wind, disruptors, Anakin, and marching, he most likely resembled a Tusken Raider, _without_ the bandages.

"So tell me," said Alpha, hurrying Obi-Wan up an adjacent corridor and into the vast control room of the troopship. "Where's this bunker, and how do we get in?"

"Mind you, there's sentries," Obi-Wan said. The floor shuddered as the drop-doors closed, and the ship, surprisingly aeronautical despite its ungainly configuration, streaked into the air again.

Alpha gave a negligent shrug. "Sentries we can handle. What else?"

"Very large sentries," Obi-Wan warned. "With extremely attuned disruptors."

Alpha examined the singed, soaked, halfway-thawed piece of ragged cloth masquerading as a Jedi robe. "Like this?"

"Like that."

"I see."

Following Obi-Wan's terse directions, the triad of clone pilots sent the troopship shooting off, flying low. Once or twice they came upon lone Separatist starfighters in the clouds, and brief battles ensued. When the Separatist pilots tried to flee, Beta, Epsilon, and Gamma blew them to shreds.

"Good shooting!" said Alpha. "Don't worry, General, we'll be on top of that bunker before you know it."

Obi-Wan tried half-heartedly to return his smile. "I do hope you're right."


	18. Monster

**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN**

**Monster**

An unmarked black fighter arrowed down towards Muunilinst, atmospheric friction leaving bright molten streaks on its matte surface. Its sublights shrieked as the droid pilot decelerated hard, pulling the sharp-nosed craft into a controlled tumble. It did not emerge from the cloud cover, as supernaturally-synchronized sensors and circuitry guided it through the churning caldera.

Count Dooku leaned back in his seat, coaxing the stubborn cramps from his back. This had been a long and entirely intolerable flight, with that wretched creature Grievous hacking in the seat beside him. He was growing restless and edgy.

Dooku could not stand Grievous. The – _thing – _was a gruesome amalgam of living flesh and droid armor, all housed in a plasteel skeleton with an ugly grey cloak and an irritating electrosonic vocabulator. Still, though, the – _thing – _was efficient, and Lords Sidious and Tyranus rewarded those who helped them.

Well, sometimes. Occasionally. If it suited them.

General Grievous had been cleverly kept from view – until now. That, however, did not mean idle. He had been personally responsible for crushing more than a few stubborn backwater Republic holdouts. Although the cyborg was not Force-sensitive, his mechanized arms could wield weapons with blinding speed and devastating fatality. Dooku had discovered this, trained the – _thing – _in as much of lightsaber skill as he thought appropriate, and let him keep the weapons of all the Jedi that he killed. Thus far, Grievous had amassed two, and was hoping to increase that number soon.

Any scrap of organic conscience had been burned out of Grievous, leaving only a merciless computer-regulated brain behind. Any underlings he was assigned, he had a habit of messily disposing of should they displease him; he had run through nine Neimoidians in the past month alone. Dooku did not count this much of a loss.

Dooku had seen firsthand the general's eagerness to kill. On Ruul and Srisuur, Haruun Kal and Abyssinia, Grievous slaughtered indiscriminately – military targets and civilians alike. There was no reasoning or compromise with him, only death immediately, or service and death later.

"Count Dooku," said Grievous, peering through the viewport. "Have we almost reached this Muunilinst?"

"So it would seem," said Dooku. "I know it does not seem particularly impressive, but places have a way of gaining notoriety when their populations are slaughtered."

The general's expressionless facemask did not change, but Dooku thought he heard excitement in the electronically regulated voice. "True, my lord. Quite true."

Dooku thought of the hold, carrying a hail of deadly cargo. Each titanium cylinder held extremely toxic gas, virulent enough to kill dozens of beings in seconds. When the time was right, these cylinders would be dropped. Muunilinst would be a ruin. The most ironic part of this was that the Senate itself had voted to authorize this.

Dooku shifted in his seat. As a rule, he disliked such broad, arbitrary massacre, although it had Grievous slobbering in anticipation. Metaphorically, of course. Perhaps a trace of his Jedi roots remained, but it all seemed so – _unnecessary. _Genophon was such a common thing. Dooku was an _artist_. Anyone could smear paint on a canvas; he alone out of many could design it.

That was the glory of the Sith, though. The universe had become theirs to do with as they pleased, whether it was sacking it or keeping it as a jewel for the galactic crown. His Master could do as he wished, but Dooku dreamed of a time when there was no Sidious, only Tyranus.

"Target detected," the droid pilot's voice echoed in the cabin. "Enemy troopship. Should fire be initiated, sir?"

Dooku sat forward. "A _troopship? _What's on board?"

"Organics, sir."

Dooku smothered a curse. "I _know _that. Anything of interest?"

"Scanning programs being broadened," the droid answered, its mechanized voice maddeningly devoid of emotion. "Force-sensitive being aboard, sir."

"A Jedi?"

"Exact specifics not detected, sir."

"A _Force-sensitive being..._" Dooku knew that there had been Jedi leading campaigns on Muunilinst previously, but he'd thought they'd left. Still, there were two prime targets currently in residence on the planet – Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. If it was the former, shooting it down would solve a thousand problems. If it was the latter, doing so would put his ownhead on the chopping block.

Dooku decided to take a chance. "Open fire on the rear sublight thrusters. Damage only, not destruction."

"Acknowledged." The droid's spindly fingers activated controls and pressed buttons, rerouted power to the fighter's cannons, and exactly three seconds later, began to splash high-powered beams over the troopship's aft quarters. There was a flare as shields repelled the blasts, but the troopship only scudded in a quick circle before the clones regained control. Dooku watched as it wheeled around, and the scopes of half a dozen heavy-duty turbolasers tried to get a fix on them.

They succeeded. A firestorm exploded around the fighter's viewports, close enough that Dooku instinctively ducked. Grievous emitted some threatening mechanical noises, or at least Dooku supposed that was what they were supposed to be. They sounded more like a ronto with the hiccups than anything remotely frightening.

The droid steered them out of the splintering ricochets, and gained some altitude on the slower troopship. A second later, conflicting blasts tangled in midair.

"Crumple their sublights!" Dooku ordered furiously. "Where's the trouble in that?"

"Strong energy shields encountered on vessel, sir. Increasing firepower."

"You'd better, you worthless hunk of scrap." The troopship was clumsier, but its firepower was worrisome. This fighter was built for speed and stealth, not combat.

After one bolt seared by nearly close enough to burn the paint off, Dooku snarled at the droid, "Reroute maximum power! I told you, _crumple their sublights_!"

"Acknowledged." The droid's metallic fingertips clicked through a new sequence.

Caught in an airborne dogfight, the troopship and the starfighter circled, jetting out streams of turbolaser bolts, each taking some damage, but not enough to knock them from the air. The fighter had crisscrosses of burn-scars etched across its lateral fins, and the troopship had black smears across its rear.

The droid increased its velocity, stitching the sky with blazing needles. The troopship dipped, one wing on fire, until automated sprayers doused the flames. In chasing it, however, the fighter had let itself slide out of the clouds, and its stealth shields wilted under the assault of the sudden Muunilinst daylight. The troopship, now sure of its target, accordingly amplified its own fire.

Dooku blinked against the burning sun, and decided that a change of plans was in order. "Drop back," he ordered the droid. "Circle around and catch it from behind. _Don't _let them pick you up on sensors, but follow them."

Dooku set his jaw.

"I want to see where they're going."

* * *

"That," said Obi-Wan breathlessly, "was a bit close."

"No joke," said Alpha. Although the clones were so used to battle now that they barely blinked, the commander seemed somewhat shaken. "I didn't even detect them on our scopes – they just swooped down out of the clouds and opened fire."

"I don't like it," Obi-Wan said edgily. He glanced back, but the mystery starfighter had vanished as quickly as it had come, erased from the readout screen – but not, it seemed, from the Force. And what he felt there frightened him. The craft on their tail was a black hole of darkness.

Alpha must have picked up something on his face. "What is it, General?"

"That thing – " Obi-Wan couldn't resist a second look back. "Did it have any markings? Did we get a read on it before it disappeared again? Surely it was a Separatist, but they prefer tri-fighters and vulture droids... There was something Force-sensitive aboard."

"If you say so." The clones were dubious of the Force, as all their power came from machinery, but they did not question its sway over the Jedi. "Anything else?"

"Yes. The entire thing was reeking of the dark side."

"Hmm. Well. We're still tracking that bunker." Alpha moved past Obi-Wan to the control panel. "And if it does come back, my men know their gunnery."

Obi-Wan nodded, throat dry. As Alpha maneuvered the troopship, damages and all, ever closer to where he _hoped _Anakin would be, the image of their attacker lingered in his head. There had been a familiar presence there...and yet its Force-signature had been too warped for a clear identification.

At last, to his vast relief, the gleaming metal outlines of the bunker materialized below them, and the shelf of rock that it was built in. Immense red eddies of cloud parted and billowed around it, infiltrating the fading light with a bloody hue.

"General, do you want to go alone, or would you like a strike team?" Alpha asked, guiding the troopship into a controlled hover a few hundred meters off the ground.

"Two wing-guards ought to be sufficient." Obi-Wan was already striding toward the drop-door. Escorted by the clones, he stepped into the cockpit of the Delta and strapped himself in, priming the turbolasers before he even fired the engines.

The clones stepped into their own starfighters – these had wing-foils in the shape of an _X, _two on each side, which could be extended or closed. Then another clone triggered a switch, and the drop-door creaked open.

Obi-Wan shot downwards in a free fall, then banked hard and came around, dialing his sensors to maximum input and turning the Delta in a circle. The clones kept on his wings, one to the right and the other to the left.

"_We're looking for an access hatch?" _one of them asked.

"_Anything that's not the ventilation scenic route." _Obi-Wan eyed the sentries warily. Even though they had frozen, they remained in combat poses, and could be reactivated all too easily. He felt terribly exposed in the air.

"_Look down there." _A shared computer link transmitted an image to Obi-Wan's onboard nav panel – a scan of the landscape below, with a launching starfighter emblazoned in red. "_Something's trying to escape. Could it be Skywalker?"_

A painful jolt of hope sparked through Obi-Wan, and he shoved the throttle forward. He tried his partner's personal comlink just in case – the one he was _supposed _to keep on his utility belt. "Anakin? Anakin, do you copy? This is Obi-Wan."

There was no answer from the other starfighter, just silence.

Obi-Wan sent the Delta skimming close, and triggered comm on a local channel. "Please identify. These are the forces of the Republic, and silence will be presumed as a sign of Separatist alliance. You have thirty seconds until we open fire."

A low laugh answered him, a woman's, both triumphant and fraught with pain. "Go ahead, Kenobi. Chase me down. Do waste the little time Skywalker has left."

Obi-Wan went cold from head to toe. There was only one person it could be, and most unfortunately, she was not likely to be lying about Anakin. "Asajj Ventress, you are a sworn enemy of the Republic, and you will be hunted down as the traitor you are." He switched back to a secure frequency and addressed the clones. "Take her."

The X-wings split off from his tail and swooped ahead, coming in on either side to frame the small fighter. The clone pilots issued an ultimatum, which Ventress clearly denied. A second later, stellar flame exploded against the heavens.

Obi-Wan wanted desperately to join the battle, but his task lay elsewhere. Hard as it was, he put the skirmish to the rear and gunned his thrusters, eyes and senses moving constantly. "Come on,"he muttered, quelling a rising panic. "Come _on_."

He sent the Delta in the direction that Ventress' fighter had come from, only to discover an impermeable durasteel wall. Pulling up quickly, he circled back again, only vaguely aware of the concussive shockwaves shaking the air just behind him.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said aloud. "Give me some help." He was fully extended in the Force, but he could only grasp a slight whisper of his partner's presence. "Please. Don't make me break the Jedi Code for nothing. Anakin, please. I know you can scarcely believe it. Don't do this to me. Oh, Anakin, where are you?"

* * *

Asajj huddled in the cockpit, going first cold and then lightheaded, fighting the dangerous repercussions of shock coiling from her shattered wrist. She held it to her chest, steering the shuttle with the other, dodging turbolasers out of sheer instinct.

The blasted clones were on her tight. She tried a number of evasive maneuvers, their brilliance somewhat lost in her clumsiness, and spiraled away as more bolts splattered on her halfway functional shields. Desperate, she lowered her broken hand to the controls and awkward, agonized, typed in a comm code.

"Broadcasting on secure channel," she said, hoping her pain didn't show in her voice. "I request immediate assistance from _any _nearby Separatist vessel. Repeat, emergency. _Immediate assistance."_

There was a pause, and then, as if in a dream, from very far away... "_Asajj?"_

She went weak in relief. "Master?_ Where are you?"_

"_Very near, my dear. Give me a moment, and I'll be with you."_

Asajj pumped her failing shields to maximum and let herself drift, spiraling in erratic patterns to throw off the clones' programmed targeting computers. Hazy oblivion nipped at the edges of her mind, and she desperately forced it back.

A fighter came tearing out of the clouds ahead, and it sent a sudden shock of hope through her. The clones turned their fire on it, and it was instantly and brutally reciprocated, exploding both the X-wings. The Separatist fighters might be most useful for sneaking, but their guns _were_ enough to cut down a few clones.

The fighter swooped alongside her, and opened a bay door. Asajj cut all power to her controls and let her silent ship drift gently into it. A few dazed seconds later, the cockpit was opened, and the sight of the familiar silver-bearded face made her go limp. "Master," she breathed.

"Asajj, tell me. Where are the Jedi?" he demanded.

"Skywalker... trapped in the bunker. Kenobi... going after him." She slumped on the cold steel floor, unable to see anything except the bright sparks of his eyes. "Skywalker cut out... weapons regulators."

"It's going to explode? You're sure?" he snapped.

"Yes..." She was wandering freely in and out of consciousness. "Master... Skywalker broke my wrist...possibly jaw as well... pain..."

"A Sith draws power from pain," he answered. "A Jedi accepts it, but a Sith uses it. The Skywalker boy has inflicted pain, and therefore, he has become a source of strength for you. Pain creates rage, and rage is the lifeblood of the Sith. Let it make you stronger. Let you mend your own faults."

Asajj tried to focus her mind to perform the necessary concentration, but it simply hurt too much. "Master, please..."

He stood above her, watching her, making no move to interfere. "You have done well, Asajj," he said, but the voice was distant and alien, the voice of a cold aristocrat rather than a caring father. "But you have much to learn, and there is still little that you understand. And you must be strong enough to overcome your weaknesses before you will ever be a Sith. In the end, you must learn that in a way, in the end, for all its power, pain _itself _is a weakness."

And with that, he left her.

* * *

Its predecessors had been blasted away by pain and fury, but one precarious thought still remained in Anakin Skywalker's head: _Get out._

He was on his knees, clawing at durasteel. Every so often another crackle of electricity would circuit through his body, and he would gag on the pain. He could smell scorched hair and flesh, dimly realized that he was the source of it, and he had to keep crawling, sometimes rising all the way to his feet before his legs gave out and he crashed back down. The experience was comparable to something that, mercifully, had only happened to him once before – being blasted with Force-lightning by Count Dooku. This was, perhaps, even worse.

Anakin refused to succumb to the lure of lying down and letting the electricity finish its work. The war had only hardened his natural physical resilience, but that assumed that the attack came from _outside. _This fire was _inside _him, tearing him into pieces.

Anakin tasted blood and sputum in his mouth. The arena seemed never-ending, but at last he found the smooth, curved shape of turbolift doors. Groaning, Anakin hauled himself to his feet, reeled and stumbled as he threatened to black out, then hung onto the wall as he punched the access key.

The whirring seemed to go on indefinitely. His stomach heaved, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, and there was nothing for it to throw up. At last, the turbolift doors opened, and he stepped into the sanitized steel capsule.

The walls were burnished to such a degree that he could see himself in them. And he, Anakin decided dispassionately, looked terrible. His leather tunic and trousers had been blasted and burned, and his staring, scarred face was as pale as ivory. Divots had been burned from the black glove covering his durasteel hand, and he stank of scorched hair, flesh, and wiring.

_And _he had lost his lightsaber. _Again. _Obi-Wan was probably going to kill him.

But a few seconds later, he had something else to worry about. The turbolift ground to a halt.

Anakin assumed that this was likely what Ventress had meant by, _"And there is no way out, I'll make quite sure of that." _But he was Anakin Skywalker. Anakin Skywalker did not believe in dead ends. Whenever there _appeared _to be no way out, where a giant stone had blocked the pathway, he only needed to carve out a large enough chunk to get through.

Minus a lightsaber, of course.

Anakin yanked open the control panel to search for the problem. He unclipped a multitool from his boot, and probed gingerly at the wiring, blinking haze.

The turbolift swayed gently, but did not move. There was no way to cut through the ceiling, and to force the doors open would only confront him with a dark, immovable steel wall. Even if he could get out and chance a leap up the shaft, he didn't trust his shaking, jerking, spark-spitting body to anything at the moment.

The source of the problem was a clipped motivator wire. _That would do it, _Anakin thought grimly. Without the link to the power source, this turbolift would be stuck here forever, or until the bunker blew up in less than two hours. Anakin had a very strong _bad feeling_ about this.

Unless, of course, the connection was spliced, but he had no wires handy...

At that moment, an idea flashed across Anakin's brain. It was obscenely risky, but it was the only glimmer of a plan he had. He peeled away the seared remnants of his leather glove and carefully lowered the multitool to the exposed wiring of his arm.

The pain was so strong that he nearly passed out. Where the multitool completed the electric circuit, with his own body as the conductor, he screamed aloud. More sparks flashed and danced over his limbs, forcing an agonized gasp from his throat.

Anakin gritted his teeth and pecked stubbornly at his arm, choosing a relatively stable, undamaged circuit that controlled locomotion. This, of course, meant that his right arm would be useless, but it was better than the alternative. Anakin had no interest in being spare parts.

He nearly brushed the severed stump. The pain was blinding. Just a few more, and then... The circuit came free.

Anakin watched it tumble, dazed, then regained his wits and snatched it out of the air. He awkwardly lowered the now-useless mechanical arm, and began to patch the replacement circuit into the turbolift controls.

The effect was instantaneous. The jury-rig flickered as it began to channel power, and Anakin watched with desperate hope. He was far too weak to attempt the excision of another circuit, and if this one failed...Anakin pushed the thought out of his head. The engine ground to life, and the turbolift began to shoot upwards.

A few short minutes later, it came to a stop, and the door opened, revealing an access chute that led to the exit hatch. Against all odds, Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, had pulled off another improbable escape.

For a long time, the turbolift hovered, open, with the Muunilinst daylight just above, promising tantalizing freedom. When several minutes had passed, its automatic subroutines closed the doors and initiated the plunge all the way back down to the arena, still carrying the body of the unconscious Jedi within.


	19. Genophon

**CHAPTER NINETEEN**

**Genophon**

Obi-Wan had to trust that the clones had done their job, and provided a opening for him before they died; he had felt their ends in the Force. He accepted the fact of their loss, thanked them for their sacrifice, and then immediately turned his attention back to Anakin. He circled back around the bunker to where Ventress had launched, and this time, dove down underneath the cliff face. Stone blurred in a dizzying smear outside his windscreen, and klaxons shrieked a breached-perimeter warning. Obi-Wan fervently hoped that no one was left to hear it.

He pulled up a split second later, and aimed the straining Delta into a narrow slit beneath the stone. The landing platform was barely large enough for even one tiny ship. He had more than an educated guess that its most recent occupant had been Ventress' bladed starfighter.

Obi-Wan waited for the dirt kicked up by his landing to settle, then opened the cockpit and leaped out. Down here, the air was still and earthy and smelled like mud. Above him, turbines set in the craggy ceiling funneled any available breeze to a generator at the back of the landing platform. Its blades whirred slowly, powering the extensive network of wiring that had embedded traps in every corner.

Obi-Wan stepped carefully over each segment, as any one of them could be triggered to blow him up at any moment, and therefore treated them with due caution. He kept one hand on his lightsaber, his senses threading through the damp stone grotto.

Following a hunch, Obi-Wan angled to the right. The platform crumbled down into a narrow fissure, and he crawled across it and into the tunnel on the other side. At the far end of this, there was an access port, studded with blinking controls.

Obi-Wan studied the grate. It was certainly blaster-proof, possibly turbolaser-proof.

It certainly wasn't lightsaber-proof. The blade came up, ignited, carved a glowing circle, and deactivated. One very wary Jedi stepped through the smoking hole.

There was a narrow chute beyond, glimmering and slippery, shot with fragmented remnants of light from burned-out glowtubes. Slices of Obi-Wan's reflection flittered in the walls, and his boots skidded on the smooth floor.

A second later, he slid to a halt on a viewing porch. A low rail guarded the edge; beyond that it plunged a good five hundred meters to a huge, silent durasteel warehouse below. Obi-Wan felt dizzy at all the empty air, quickly turned away, and began combing desperately through the Force.

He was very close. "Anakin?" Obi-Wan whispered. The name hung in the air.

Obi-Wan drew his lightsaber, and held the hilt in his hand. He was ready to spring the power stud at once, but there was nothing for him to fight. Just dark air, and silence, and an intangible feeling of a nameless dread.

A blinking light caught his eye. Still on guard, Obi-Wan looked over. It was the controls for something...a ventilation shaft, a turbolift, or even the atmospheric regulation; he had no idea. Still, he walked over, the hem of his tattered robe fluttering out in a silent draft. It was definitely a control panel, and the glowing, numbered keys suggested _turbolift._

Experimentally, Obi-Wan punched the access key.

For long moments, nothing happened. Gears ground and clanked in protest, fibrillating with a mechanized whine. The shaft shuddered, but it seemed as if nothing had been activated. Maybe it had been set with traps too. Maybe he'd transmitted his own death code.

Obi-Wan pushed these dark thoughts out of his head and flipped open the control panel, trying to see if a motivator had been shot, or if the thing had been seeded with explosives. He excavated carefully through the cables, wishing that Anakin was there and reminded keenly of why he was not.

But before he could do anything, the turbolift started to rumble again, shaking the floor. Obi-Wan took two quick, judicious steps backward, eyeing the entire apparatus warily, more certain than ever that some part of it was going to come crashing down on him. A second later, the doors flashed open. There was something slumped inside, but it was too dark to tell what.

Obi-Wan knew entirely too much about traps. He was fairly sure that this entire Muunilinst adventure had been one to start with, and he still did not see how it would end. At that moment, it ceased to matter. He leapt forward, seized the figure by the feet, and dragged it very indecorously out. Then he froze.

The person was Anakin, all right, and he looked terrible. The glove over his mechanical arm had vanished, and it looked as if the wiring had been gutted. His clothing was scorched and torn, his face was ashen, and every so often, he would shake uncontrollably. There was a steaming scar cut alongside his right eye.

"_Anakin!" _Obi-Wan flung himself next to him, cupping his head in the palm of his hand. His former Padawan was flaming-hot to the touch. "Anakin, love of the Maker, speak to me!"

There was a long pause. Anakin's eyelids fluttered faintly. "...Don't..._touch..._"

"What?"

"Living..._motherboard_..."

Obi-Wan let go just as a spray of blue sparks crackled in Anakin's hair. "I have to get you out of here somehow," he said, "and I can't carry you if you're going to – "

"Give me..._ hand."_

Obi-Wan reached down. Anakin lifted his mechanical hand, but couldn't seem to make the fingers respond. With a muffled curse that Obi-Wan pretended not to hear, he let it fall and reached up with his flesh hand instead. Obi-Wan hauled him to his feet, and caught him as he reeled forward.

"What _happened _to you?" he said, settling Anakin's arm around his shoulders and maneuvering the two of them back toward the exit as fast as they could conceivably go, which was not very. "Did all this come from the ventilation shaft?"

Anakin groaned. "_Terrible _idea. You... right. Usually... are."

Obi-Wan was bearing the brunt of Anakin's dead weight in addition to trying to steer them both, and he couldn't think of an appropriately snappy comeback about the truth of this. He settled for, "Mmm, it's taken you this long to learn?"

"Apparently." Quite abruptly, Anakin shrugged free of Obi-Wan's grasp, stumbled forward as more blue jolts shook him, and fell to his hands and knees. He remained crouched there, breathing very raggedly.

His weakness frightened Obi-Wan, who was utterly used to Anakin's fearlessness and strength, depended on it more than he'd care to admit. Fighting back that sentiment, he lifted Anakin's arm over his shoulders again. "Come on, we're almost there."

A few minutes later, they reached the grate. This presented another problem, as Anakin could barely walk, much less crawl through a small, hot-glowing hole, and Obi-Wan finally decided to insert him through the opening as if he was swiping an identi-chip. Anakin collapsed on the ground as Obi-Wan gave his booted feet an extra shove, then crawled through himself.

The two of them lay side by side, gasping for breath. Obi-Wan recovered first, hauled Anakin back to his feet, and faced the daunting prospect of the fissure. Finally, he hoisted Anakin over his shoulder, wrapped his arm around Anakin's legs, and stumbled through the rocks, back toward the slit that opened into the underground landing platform. His muscles screamed with the weight, but he somehow managed to drag both of them over the rocks and into the platform.

It had occurred to him to wonder what to possibly do with Anakin once they reached the Delta, which was as small as a one-man fighter could go. There was nothing for it; he lifted Anakin up over the wing and deposited him in the scant floorspace. Then he clambered up after him, punched the cockpit closed, and wrenched the Delta through a series of heart-stopping acrobatic arcs to pull them free. Somewhat weighted with the additional passenger, it did so clumsily.

The starfighter spiraled out into the open air. Obi-Wan, at last, allowed himself to relax, and then –

He sensed the explosion a split-second before it happened, and redlined the throttle as the air went fire-crimson, and then soot-black. He had no idea which way was up, and he fought the controls just trying to stay airborne. Chunks of shrapnel buffeted the tiny fighter, and Anakin crashed into Obi-Wan's legs with another groan. The right wing dipped, had its stabilizer sheared off, and spun into the beginnings of a certain-death tumble.

Obi-Wan furiously rerouted, threw all his power into the remaining good engines, and the starfighter veered out of the cloudbank. The pressure of the explosion made his windscreen strain, threatening to shatter. He was flying blind – all his scopes were completely fouled and the Delta was without a right stabilizer. As the detritus from the explosion began, slowly, to settle, he opened the first comm channel he could and sent out an emergency alert.

Anakin was worryingly silent, but Obi-Wan had no attention to spare for him. Jaw clenched, he attempted to guide the out-of-control starfighter toward what he dearly hoped was the troopship. "Alpha? Come in, Commander Alpha! Alpha, this is Obi-Wan Kenobi!"

"We have you, General," Alpha answered. "Stand by."

"Alpha, I've lost a stabilizer! The bunker just blew into smithereens behind me!" Obi-Wan struggled to keep the hairy edge of panic out of his voice. "Just – catch me with a tractor beam or something – " The comm panel seemed to be in imminent danger of exploding. _"Now!"_

A second later, the damaged Delta lurched and bucked, and an indicator flashed on Obi-Wan's readout screen. "We have you," Alpha confirmed. "Just ride it out."

The starfighter fought the conflicting currents of downdraft and tractor beam. It groaned and thrashed, rivets popping, transparisteel fracturing, dropfins flailing. The veins stood out in Obi-Wan's neck. He had completely lost control.

"Master..." It was Anakin, chiming in at an inopportune moment. More irony, Obi-Wan supposed.

"Just a few more seconds..." The troopship was approaching rapidly, although this view of it, filtered through the web of cracks in the windscreen, was somewhat unusual. Another slice of shrapnel materialized through the explosion-cloud and carved a gouge out of the Delta's maligned right wing.

A second later, the troopship was on top of them, and the drop-door gaped open, and then, thank the Maker, they were inside, spinning uncontrollably, scraping up showers of sparks. The instant the fighter came to a stop, Obi-Wan triggered the cockpit release, seized Anakin around the waist, and catapulted them both to safety.

The deck came rushing up to meet him, and Obi-Wan's body absorbed most of the blow, Anakin crashing down on top of him. He was aware that the clones were spraying the Delta with a cooling-mix gas, and that he could not breathe. Too tired to get up, he simply lay there.

A moment passed. Mercifully, someone removed Anakin.

"General..." It was Alpha, he thought; the only way to tell the clones apart was by whether or not they wore the commander's colors. "General, it's all right. Might I suggest we get the bloody blazes off Muunilinst?"

Obi-Wan struggled to sit up. His back ached as if someone had stabbed it with a thousand lightsabers. "Ventress... we came for Ventress."

"She was here and now she's not," said Alpha pragmatically. "She may have left a trace that we can track her by."

The clone's words were cool, sensible, but Obi-Wan knew that he had developed an appetite for the very human emotion, revenge. "My men are getting a fix on her – wait." He paused, frowning, listening to a message on his helmet comm. "There's a Separatist interceptor just ahead."

Obi-Wan's tiredness abruptly vanished. There was battle to be done now; he jumped to his feet. "Where?"

"Come on." Alpha raced away toward the cockpit, and Obi-Wan, loping along as best as he could, followed.

Sure enough, it was visible ahead. A narrow black fighter, gaining altitude rapidly – but only its thrusters were firing, not its full sublights. Obi-Wan's eyes narrowed.

"They're not leaving the planet," he said.

Alpha looked puzzled. "But why would they stay?"

Obi-Wan did not answer. His eyes closed, his brow furrowed, he reached out through the Force – and felt the Force lash back at him.

His eyes jerked open, and he reeled back in his seat. "Ventress. Ventress is aboard...and Count Dooku, to judge from the strength of that. Keep on them!"

"Don't worry, General. We have it." Alpha bent over the nav panel and depressed a switch. "Gunners! Target!"

"Commander," one of them began. "Count _Dooku _is aboard – "

"Yes, I know. Warm the turbolaser batteries!" Alpha roared, the crosshatches of scar on Jango Fett's face turning white. "Are you disobeying me, Lieutenant?"

"Commander. I don't think you grasp the situation – my lord would – "

Alpha turned on them. "If you don't obey me, you can drift home! _Fire!"_

The clones seemed oddly reluctant. Alpha placed a plasteel-encased hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "If we blast them out of the sky, we might be able to end this war right now," he said confidently. "Then we can all go back to our lives."

_Lives. _Obi-Wan wondered. If the war was through, what use would a clone have? They had been grown and bred for fighting; no sane human would consent to marry and mate with one, and their duplicated karyotypes broke down easily. Perhaps they would all be left to rot on whatever planet they had been assigned to. Instead of answering, he just nodded.

The interceptor cut from side to side, weaving erratically. Alpha tracked the process on glowing scopes, eyes narrowing. Turbolasers pounded and ricocheted, but the shots always seemed to go slightly wide.

Alpha swore. "That Force of theirs must be knocking them away." He shot a sidelong glance at Obi-Wan. "No offense."

"None taken." Obi-Wan studied the targeting panel intently. His head hurt, but it did not matter. How wonderful would it be, to blow both Ventress and Dooku out of the sky at a single strike...it would more than make up for the miserable failure that the rest of Muunilinst had entailed.

"They're coming around." Alpha clicked in a change of course, and the troopship swung around, although somewhat less gracefully than the agile interceptor, pulses of blazing energy still linking them. Clones and Obi-Wan alike were thrown back into their command chairs as the cruiser completed its circle, and roared off again.

Both starfighters soared high over the landscape, but inexplicably, the Separatists did not seem to be attempting to leave the planet. Obi-Wan had a bad feeling about this.

The ground streaked and fell away, buildings and battlefields appearing and vanishing in quick succession. The throb of the troopship's engines made Obi-Wan's teeth chatter, and he had no idea what they'd done with Anakin, but this was an opportunity they could not afford to pass up.

Alpha frowned. "They're heading for Muun City," he announced.

"But they're dropping something," said Obi-Wan, staring at the aft hatches of the interceptor. They had slid open, revealing a tray of titanium canisters. "They're jetting cylinders of some sort – "

The first began its tumble, trailing a thin, vaguely greenish vapor. There was a very, very long moment of silence in the cockpit as they watched it go, and ten seconds later, Obi-Wan felt the sharp jolt of death in the Force. He let out a strangled cry.

"They're not leaving," he said. "They're _killing."_

* * *

"_Faster!" _Dooku snapped. "I don't want them gaining! Those wretched clones aren't even supposed to be firing on us! Don't they have their orders?"

Grievous and the droid ignored him. Asajj was slumped in the seat beside him, motionless, drawing deep, ragged breaths. No one seemed to share his fury, and this irritated him further. "General," said Dooku, biting the words off crisply. "Deploy another canister, and let them _see _you this time."

"My lord, do you think that – "

"_Do it!"_

Grievous complied, scuttling like an outsize mechanical spider back to the aft hatch. He pressed his ugly face against the transparisteel viewport, then flicked the release catch for another canister. It too began its lethal plunge, and Grievous watched it go. If such a thing was possible, Dooku thought the repellent thing was smiling. How utterly distasteful. He wondered if the clones had seen him.

A bare second later, a heavy blast thundered the ship. They had seen him, all right.

Ventress stirred. "Master," she said, eyes closed. "The bunker blew."

"Yes, but – " Dooku whirled. "I haven't felt Skywalker and Kenobi erased from the Force yet. Until then, we must presume they are alive."

"Your Master said he _wanted_... Skywalker alive."

"I do not care what my Master thinks," Dooku snapped. "He has thus far failed to make Skywalker do anything aside from acting out of anger once or twice, and it has achieved nothing. What does he need him for? He has me, and I have you."

A faint, exhausted smile flicked over Asajj's thin lips. "So you do."

Another blast rocked the interceptor. Dooku cursed expressively. "They have their orders! They are not supposed to be firing on me, unless Sidious has changed the orders without my knowledge – "

"And he might have. Just kill him."

Dooku looked up and glared viciously at Grievous, caught in the act of releasing another cylinder. "Not _yet, _you half-brained idiot!" The taunt was almost literally true. "I'll tell you when!"

"Approaching Muun City," the droid pilot announced.

"I take that back. Release them – half should do, I think, and then the rest whenever you see a Republic troopship. I expect they left enough of your memory for you to judge what _those _are_."_

"Of course," Grievous answered, indignant.

One by one, the cylinders began falling into the vast plateau of Muun City below, once very fine, but now burned and wrecked like the rest of the planet. Even from the air, he could see the interweaving veins of blaster fire, clones and droids fighting doggedly. The droids would shortly not have to worry about their opponents.

"Close the vents," Dooku ordered the pilot. "And see if you can't scrape the troopship off us on one of these tower remnants."

The droid acknowledged, and the interceptor accelerated through the broken skyscrapers, still spewing a constant noxious rain. Down below, the firing from the clones slowly began to cease as they choked on the gas, and the clouds' red light sieved green. The darkened Force sang in Dooku's blood, making him strong.

Asajj's eyes opened halfway, and another small smile touched her gaunt face. "Death," she said. "Crude, but effective."

Grievous was cackling diabolically in the rear, releasing more gas cylinders despite the fact that his silhouette was the target of a seemingly never-ending hail of turbolaser bolts. Dooku frowned. It seemed that the clones, Commander Alpha in especial, were taking their place on the Jedi side entirely too well. He would have to speak to Sidious about that.

The interceptor dodged and weaved. The troopship was slower, but it stayed right with it, plowing through windswept gusts of poison and opening fire relentlessly with its more powerful batteries. The slaughter sweeping over Muun City made the Force a blackened, unrecognizable thing, torn and warped. Dooku reveled in it.

Below him, the clones of Muunilinst died.

Genophon gone horribly wrong, exactly as his Master had orchestrated.

The Republic, according to Darth Sidious, was going to begin losing the war.

* * *

"What is that thing?" Obi-Wan barked, as another toxic mist smothered the troopship's windscreen. Alpha did not seem to care, keeping the throttle at maximum velocity until they broke free, and the receding form of the interceptor was once again framed in their crosshairs.

"That thing tripping the release switches? I don't know," the clone commander answered grimly. "It's not something I've seen before."

The horrible skull-mask leered at them, and jointed durasteel fingers crawled out to trip, almost mockingly, the hasp for yet another gas canister. It fell through thousands of meters of empty air, buffeted by conflicting gusts, and Alpha's frantic warning to his comrades below, telling them to seal their helmet vents, went in vain.

His swarthy face going white as snow, Alpha collapsed into the commander's chair. Obi-Wan closed his eyes again, bracing for the sickening impact of death in the Force. A second later, the full clout of it struck him.

He could not stand it; sitting here in the cockpit and watching helplessly as clones died. He stood up and slipped into the back of the troopship, straining for balance each time the hallway tilted, which it did frequently. At last, he stepped into the medical capsule where they had placed Anakin.

A muffler had absorbed the excess electrical shock from his body, and an Emdee droid was busily patching all the burns it had left behind; it had stripped Anakin's charred tunic away and draped him in a white sheet. Its mechanized fingers, so like the other set and yet used so differently, gently unwrapped a bacta pad and applied it to the gouge in Anakin's right temple.

Anakin opened his eyes halfway, sensing Obi-Wan's presence, and offered him a sick, exhausted smile. He was strapped to the narrow bunk, so he couldn't have lifted a hand even if he had wanted, but there was a faint spark of his old self in his gaze. "Hello," he whispered, voice a thready croak. "Isn't this interesting? Usually it's _me _having to rescue _you..._in poor shape...from life-threatening...situations."

"There will be time enough for wit later, old friend," Obi-Wan said gently, smoothing Anakin's tousled, radiation-bleached hair out of his face. "Why don't you focus your energies on healing?"

"Wouldn't be any fun," Anakin whispered. "And I can't. The Force is too sick." He lifted anguished blue eyes that scarcely seemed to see. "It's _screaming, _Obi-Wan."

"Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress..." Obi-Wan could barely make himself say the words. "Have done a terrible thing. Once it became apparent that we had escaped... they are gassing Muunilinst. This planet is dying, and we cannot stop it."

The medical droid carefully began to mend the burns on Anakin's flesh hand and arm, and he shuddered with the pain, but did not cry out. His eyes closed again as he said, "But that's not it. There's something else on board. It registers oddly...it's not quite organic...but there's a trace anyway."

"We saw it." Obi-Wan's throat was tight and cold. "I don't know what it is. It sucks up the Force like a gaping maw. It's..._black. _It's made for killing."

"And it's the one tripping switches," said Anakin, knowing without being told.

"Yes. I don't know what it is, but it's in their service. I don't know which one of them came up with this – Dooku or Ventress," said Obi-Wan, a sudden, unaccustomed bitterness poisoning his words. "Or even this Darth Sidious. This is a catastrophic failure. Only droids will remain alive on Muunilinst. The Separatists have taken it...this is one Outer Rim Siege that we have utterly _lost."_

Anakin winced at the finality in his voice. "This entire mission has been a disaster. Master...it's terrible, but I have this feeling, and I can't shake it...that Muunilinst has been a turning point, and it's sending us the _wrong _way."

Obi-Wan could not argue. He sat in the lone white chair and watched the medical droid work, watched Anakin slip into drowsy, drug-induced stupor, and was forced to reflect on the terrifying possibility that his former Padawan was entirely right.


	20. The End of Sanity

**CHAPTER TWENTY**

**The End of Sanity**

The Grand Audience Chamber of the Galactic Senate was packed full to bursting. Every hover-box was full, every Senator was accounted for, and every eye was fixed on the man who stood, flanked by two aides, at the center of it all: Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. And every owner of every eye, no matter whether the being in question possessed two or four or a dozen, wanted answers from him.

"You _promised _that this genophon would not go so badly awry," bellowed Iridonian Senator Khafeir do'sa Sjuul. "You were _wrong! _Instead we have lost many clones, Muunilinst, and very nearly the war!"

Palpatine spread his hands, the very picture of a benevolent, worried leader. "The failure of Muunilinst is a catastrophic loss, my friends. But the measure I authorized had nothing to do with this. Can any reasonable being believe that I would _order _the failure of such a crucial siege?" His tone radiated wounded disbelief. "Our special clone battalions had not even reached the planet when this abomination was perpetrated. This has the taint of the Separatists, of course. They were the ones who killed our brave forces, not I."

"And who was it?" Malastarian Senator Ask Aak rebutted. "Who did this?"

"The name..." Palpatine paused. "The name I have been given is _Grievous," _he said carefully. "According to the few units of Clone Intelligence that survived Muunilinst, it was believed that a bio-droid pretending to the rank of General was the one that unleashed such slaughter." He paused again, collecting himself. "It would seem he has been hidden from our gaze. He has already been personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of beings, on dozens of worlds."

Shouting broke out across the floor.

Padmé watched it all, forced herself to process it, could not make herself believe it. Only a few units of Clone Intelligence had survived Muunilinst. Only a few. Clones. Everything else organic on the planet had succumbed to the deadly gas-drops of the Separatists. Everyone else had been killed. Everyone. By this General Grievous.

_Oh, Annie. Oh, my Annie. Was that the last time I will ever see you? _Her throat ached. Unshed tears pricked her eyelids. Her Anakin, so tall and strong and brave and selfless – she could picture his last moments with heartbreaking clarity.

Padmé sat there, barely listening. Across the way, she caught sight of two Jedi Masters – Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin – sitting on the edge of the arena. They wore expressions of shock, disbelief, anger. She could not look at them for too long.

Palpatine was speaking now, impressively, his voice echoing through the chamber. "We must _ensure _that this terrible tragedy never happens again! With your vote, I will immediately expand surveillance so that a monster such as Grievous will _never _be left to walk free again! Let Muunilinst be an example to us all! With these powers you grant me, I will form us into a _stronger _commonwealth! We – will – be – _victorious!"_

The Senate exploded in cheers, shaking the arena. Padmé shook her head, and looked across to where Bail sat in the Alderaanian box, silent and frozen-faced.

"Let there be a bill to access _every _transaction, _every _conversation, _every _datapad entry, _every _starfighter and _every _warrior!" Palpatine boomed. "_There will never be another General Grievous! No _planet will be caught off guard such as Muunilinst was!"

The Senate's cheering grew even louder.

A soft voice, flavored with a lilting accent, spoke in her ear. "And so he carves another wedge from our Constitution. The pledge of uncertain victory is what he gives us in return."

Padmé turned to see that Mon Mothma had steered the Chandrilian box closely alongside her own Naboo one. The tall, auburn-haired woman regarded her with dread in her ice-crystal eyes, and shook her head, leaning close to be heard over the turmoil in the Arena. "This is the end of sanity, Senator Amidala. For the first time in a long time, the Republic is losing."

"But in the end, we _will_ win, won't we?" said Padmé nervously.

Mon Mothma shook her head. "Perhaps now. Perhaps never. All I can say with any certainty is that things will never be the same."

* * *

Much later, Padmé walked restlessly through the red-carpeted, sunset-hued corridors and tried to make herself believe it. _Annie. Dead. My Annie._

She wanted to cry. She didn't. It wasn't possible. Any moment, he would walk through the doors, and lift her up, and she would tell him – she would tell him –

Padmé let out a very unsteady breath.

The only, _only _good thing about this was that –

– She felt like a worse traitor than the Separatists –

– When her child was born, nobody would know who its father had been.

Padmé resumed walking. Her legs ached with weariness but she could not stop. Then she might have nothing else left, and her thoughts might overcome her. She could not have said why, but she'd had a suspicion, and today – only today – it had been confirmed. She was pregnant, and the good news had coincided with the horrifying – the baby's father, her husband, her Annie, was almost certainly dead.

_And what if he isn't? _It gave Padmé a terrible rush of hope, followed by a sickening presentiment. Even if by some miracle Anakin returned alive, they would still be ruined. She was a very well-known Senator, and news would spread, tongues would wag, and gossips would pry. She cut a far more celibate public figure than many of her colleagues, and the appearance of a child would be thoroughly questioned. Even the robes of state she wore would not conceal a pregnancy forever.

And Anakin... There was no question, it would be the end with the Jedi. He would be cast out in disgrace, leaving them alone, adrift in a curious and hostile galaxy.

It was sunset on Coruscant. Padmé was dizzy with hope, fear, sorrow. She had to sit down, press her forehead against chill transparisteel. She should never have agreed... she never should have let him... and yet he had become the only thing she lived for.

Padmé sat there for what felt like forever, as the light began to fade and the first stars began to sparkle. This might be the end, it might be the beginning, but Mon Mothma was right. Nothing would ever, could ever possibly, be the same.

* * *

Mace Windu stood alone in the darkened communications room of the Jedi Temple and spoke quietly to the gauzy ghost in front of him. The ghost looked exhausted, his Jedi robes tattered and torn, his face creased with new lines. He sat in a command chair in a Republic troopship, and he spoke as if the act itself was a great effort.

"Master Kolar and Master Tiin told me of Muunilinst," said Mace heavily. "Palpatine says it was a Separatist attack, but it reeks of Sith treachery. And yet... it's strange that such a calamity opens the door for Palpatine to gain yet more power."

There was a long pause. The ghost kept his head bowed, still wary of reprisal.

"I forgive you, Master Kenobi." Mace smiled grimly. "I am, you see, too relieved that you are alive to care for much else."

The ghost nodded slowly, and then spoke. "Anakin's recovering," he said softly. "Alpha thinks that none of his comrades on Muunilinst aside from those on our troopship survived. And Ventress has eluded us again, Master."

Mace Windu absorbed this news with a slow nod. Inside, however, he was screaming for her to be destroyed. She had done enough damage. Perhaps it was not a Jedi emotion, perhaps he must forgive, but Maker help him, it was hard these days.

"I don't think we shall let the galaxy at large know of your survival just yet," Mace said after several moments. "It may be that this can work to our advantage. We have received news that Viceroy Gunray has retreated to his homeworld of Cato Neimoidia. You and Anakin can pursue him...he is very high-ranking. If you can capture him, we may finally have some leverage. And a cowardly Neimoidian is a far easier foe than a trained Sith apprentice."

"When Anakin is recovered," said Obi-Wan firmly. "He's taken well to bacta and burn therapy, it shouldn't be long."

"Your favorite, Commander Cody, has been instructed to meet you there at a later time," Mace continued. "If you need help, he will be available. Commander Alpha has been reassigned to Saleucami."

Obi-Wan frowned as Mace named another of the tumultuous Outer Rim Sieges. "It never ends, does it?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Mace reached to sever the communication, then paused. "Be careful, Kenobi. Be mindful. The dark side of the Force has grown even stronger, and it clouds everything. Even Master Yoda cannot see clearly."

Obi-Wan nodded, absorbing this. He raised his head and fixed his gaze to Mace's. "I understand, Master. The troopship is hidden in deepspace for now, as it will be until we are ready. But we will be at Cato Neimoidia within the standard week."

"Thank you. If Viceroy Gunray still believes you dead – " A reluctant smile tugged at Mace's mouth. "Let's just say it will be a surprise."

Obi-Wan nodded again. "One might say." And with that, the hologram vanished.

Mace stood there for a long time, hands resting on the bank. It had come to this. Obi-Wan and Anakin nearly killed, the utter ruin of Muunilinst, Ventress escaping again, and the beginning of the end for the Jedi, the Republic, and his waning hopes.

Twilight had come.

Soon night must fall.


	21. Chaos

**PART THREE**

**During the**

**Execution**

**of Order 66**

**SHATTERED SERENITY**

**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE**

**Chaos  
**

Coruscant goes mad.

It is said that the Jedi have orchestrated a rebellion. It is said that they have been overthrown, that they have been slaughtered. The smoke of the Temple's burning glasses the horizon, a shroud shot through with a heart of flame.

No one knows that this has happened everywhere.

* * *

On Mygeeto: A lone Jedi Knight runs beneath a leaden sky, with a legion of armored clones at his back. Acting on orders, and not out of any particular malice, they stop, raise well-used blaster rifles to weathered epaulets, and take aim.

He turns to face them in shock and disbelief. It is too late, it has been too late for years. He raises his lightsaber, sends the first few ricocheting back, but there are far too many. Ki-Adi-Mundi only realizes the futility of it all as a rain of blaster bolts scream into his chest and dissolve his world forever.

* * *

On Felucia: A slender green-skinned Twi'lek woman leads a horde of clones through this dreamlike world of mountains and flowers, its sky a creamy yellow. A long time ago, Felucia was paradise. Paradise has been blown to pieces, bombed and shattered.

She never even sees it coming.

Aayla Secura never has a chance.

* * *

On Cato Neimoidia: Plo Koon steers a Jedi starfighter over the arcing stone bridges and sheeting waterfalls of this strangely beautiful world, so undeserving of its sniveling and cowardly race. Behind him and around him, clones keep with him, tracing their own exhaust arcs in the blue, blue sky.

And then they change. Then they swoop nearer, tight on his tail, and open fire. Dazzling lances spray outwards and swallow Koon's ship.

Final failure tastes like metal exploding in your face, hot metallic blood, and never-ending darkness.

* * *

On Utapau: A clone who has become a friend hands a Jedi his weapon, gently teases him for losing it, and sends him on his way. Moments later, he takes his orders and commands that the Jedi be cut down.

His dragonmount takes the worst of it, but neither living man nor dead beast are spared a thousand-meter fall. As Obi-Wan Kenobi tumbles, the last thing he remembers is anguish before unconsciousness and frigid water swallow him whole.

A clone turns to the first, disbelieving. "You killed him. You killed General Kenobi."

Commander Cody does not listen. "Commander Alpha, I have my orders. Now step aside. I need to see the body before I'll be sure. Kenobi is hard to kill."

Commander Alpha stares at him. "You are a traitor."

"_He_ was a traitor. The Jedi Rebellion will soon be crushed."

Commander Alpha, furious, draws his blaster.

"This is high treason, Alpha_._"Commander Cody raises his own weapon, cocks it, lets the preparation to fire come naturally to his battle-trained hands. "Step down or I'll shoot you."

"You can't do this. Kenobi is our ally. And you cannot kill me. We are brothers, we came to Utapau out of our mutual respect for the general. We have served together for a long time. We are the _same person_."

"And that's the beauty of clones."Cody targets the center of his brother's chest. "No matter how many you kill, you never lose anyone at all."

The blaster fires. No one is lost.

* * *

On Kashyyyk: A pair of clone troopers take their orders like their comrades, turn, and regard without emotion the diminutive Jedi Master that they must kill. They walk forward, preparing themselves, and raise their blasters.

The last thing _they _remember is a shear of green energy.

They are the ones who never saw it coming.

The circle is completed on Coruscant.

They believe that the chaos is contained here.

They do not know what has happened elsewhere.

* * *

In the Temple: a shadow with burning eyes and burning lightsaber stalks the footsteps of those who were once his kin. The Jedi try to fight him, him and his army of turncoat clones, but he's simply too strong. They are drawn into the glowing blue vortex of his blade, and there they meet their doom.

Bodies litter this sacred, peaceful ground. The archives are pillaged, ancient records and holocrons destroyed. The silence of death thunders through this ransacked memory. A memory like the Jedi.

Anakin Skywalker spits on their very existence.

In an opulent office in Five Hundred Republica: The shadow watches his work, and it is beautiful.

It is _magnificent._

Utter victory tastes like chaos overstepping its bounds, and his own twisted, scarred face, and the stench of smoke from the burning Jedi Temple.

It tastes like _revenge._

The Sith have risen again, and their stranglehold on the galaxy will last forever. Anakin Skywalker is their key. Anakin Skywalker is their victory.

Then Darth Sidious turns, and walks from the office, and walks down, free and alone and fearing no attack, to the darkest cells holding the most dangerous Separatist prisoners. There is one that is still alive. There is one that he has not let them touch.

Asajj Ventress has been starved and beaten, and she lifts the face of a broken woman to his. She stares at him dully, barely recognizing him.

He decides to give her a clue. "Do you remember me, my _dear?"_

She knows him then. Slowly, her face contorts in hatred, and she tries to spit at his feet. "You let that boy kill my Master," she says.

"Your Master was a traitor, planning to betray me, too old and not nearly as powerful as Skywalker, the boy he would have had you kill." Sidious' rage is as potent as a cracking whip. "You might have destroyed _everything."_

He ignites his lightsaber, the blood-colored blade eager to drink more. He raises it above her head and says, "To what Kenobi and Skywalker might have done long ago."

She looks up at him, praying to see a scrap of that unknown emotion, pity, in Sidious' face. Instead, all she sees are reflections of flame in Emperor Palpatine's yellow eyes.

Asajj Ventress dies with two words on her lips. A breath, and a name.

The name of her Master.

The name is, _Oh, Ky._

* * *

In Five Hundred Republica, and yet still innocent: Padmé Amidala stares at the horizon, and stares at the man begging her to wait, and realizes that her husband, the Annie she fell in love with, is lost to her forever. This cold-eyed, distant stranger still professes love, and tells her that he is going to Mustafar to put an end to the war. Forever. In one night.

Their baby is restless inside her, kicking heartily. She begs Anakin not to leave, but he slips out from underneath her touch and turns away and flies out of Coruscant and out of her life and out of her knowledge and out of their future.

Padmé Amidala learns how it feels when your heart breaks, or so she thinks. But a greater treachery is still waiting for her. For Anakin Skywalker has not yet concluded all the pain and heartbreak he must cause.


	22. Anakin Skywalker, Forever

**PART FOUR**

**Immediately After**

_**Revenge of the Sith**_

**PIECES OF ETERNITY**

**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO**

**Anakin Skywalker, Forever**

You are Anakin Skywalker, and your life has gone mad. It is a half-life, a waking nightmare. Your world is permanently filtered through transparisteel viewports, your body encased in a black, insectile exoskeleton of machinery. You hear your own hateful breathing echoing in your ears, mechanized hiss by mechanized hiss.

You don't know what's happened. Al you can remember is intense, desperate, blinding pain. The sight of your own flesh burning. You remember your fury at the man you once loved but now have sworn to kill – Obi-Wan Kenobi, face pale and prideful, staring at you as you lay burning on the hellish Mustafar shore.

Anger and fear compete in your sluggish brain, as the wiring and circuitry dazzle you back to numb awareness. You are nothing but a tool now, and now you realize the final victory of the Sith. They promise you yourself, and that is all you will ever have.

You slake the pain with killing, fast and brutal. Anyone who dares to challenge you, you sear through them with your new lightsaber, an incandescent ruby spear. You drown the ache in your heart, the tortured din of your thoughts, with blood.

It's Padmé you want. The woman you loved, your wife, who bore your child. Padmé is dead. Master says you killed her, but you cannot bear to believe it. Obi-Wan must have done it to ensure that she would never join you, as she might have wished.

And Obi-Wan. You hate him, your entire body shakes and aches and cries out with the loathing. He loved you, and he betrayed you. But in the depths of night, as sleep programs lock your body into agonized stasis, vague memories come spilling back, and you cannot bear it. Your thoughts pummel the remnants of your skull.

_Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan. Oh, Obi-Wan, how could you do this? _Your lidless, seeping eyes roll violently beneath the helmet. You lie there in a half-resting trance. _You were my master, my friend. If you had been strong enough to turn away from your beloved Jedi and join me – I wouldn't have had to try to kill you. But you were seduced by the Jedi lies, and you considered them more important then me. I will destroy you. I HATE you!_

The anger is hot, wild in you, like an avenging demon. You feel strong and invulnerable when you make this pronouncement – if you can strike down the last true enemy in your way, the pain will not devour you.

And then you want to scream, and the thoughts simmer and seethe in the wasteland of your mind, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop them, can never. _Oh, my Obi-Wan. My father, my Master, my friend, my brother, my other half... Why? Why?_

And you hate him even more for it.

You have chosen your own path, and must walk it. You are beyond the Jedi now, even beyond the Sith. You do not need love, when hate and fear are far stronger. They are your weapons. The Force is your tool.

If only you could let go of the agony pulsating through you, eating you alive. In your most sleepless hours, the shadows sing to you. _Traitor traitor traitor, evil evil evil, darkness darkness darkness – _until you want to cover your ears and beg for it to stop, when you remember you have no ears at all.

You have no choice. You have to prowl, find one more victim, a twisted atonement. It is _their _fault you have become this, when you have no idea who _they _are, and you have to see them kneel, see them blanch, see them beg Lord Vader for mercy, when mercy has been burned out of you along with everything else, as it will soon be burned out of them in the cleansing blood of your lightsaber.

You are Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker died in the fires on Coruscant.

You are a fortress of durasteel, with a broken, bleeding heart rotting inside. Your very name inspires anxiety, your presence gives it way to full-out-panic. Your master is the Emperor, and soon enough you begin to forget.

You forget everything except the pain.

That will be with you forever.


	23. The New Jedi Order

**CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE**

**The New Jedi Order**

Aubergine sunset dyes the boundless white sky a deep, wine-dark purple, shot through with vivid streaks of red and orange. The bloated spheres of the twin suns slide away, and ion contrails sluice the horizon as starfighters pass to fight battles on other worlds, distant worlds, battles that may determine the course of the future.

Here on Tatooine, no one cares. This is a far-out-of-the-way planet, smothered in hostile deserts and scattered spaceports, forgotten by the civilized systems – what was the old Galactic Republic and is now the Empire. Aside from krayt dragons and Podracing, there is little of interest. Danger is rife. Slavery and gambling pervade heavily.

Nobody remembers that Tatooine was the home of a humble slave named Anakin Skywalker, who became the most famous – and reviled – Jedi. He was a hero, his face in every HoloNet broadcast, his exploits heavily publicized and analyzed and mulled over. He and his partner, his former Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, are – were – the ultimate Jedi, the last symbols of hope in a chaotic and polarizing war.

And thus, the news has not yet reached Tatooine that their greatest denizen, the slave that no one remembers except for the Lars family and an aging Toydarian, has fallen. The most revered Jedi has become the traitor to the Order, to the Republic, to everything he professed to love. Only a scant few know that he has become the black-cloaked, ice-hearted Darth Vader, but everyone knows that he has fallen. He is worse than evil – he has shattered the hopes of billions of beings.

There is one man on Tatooine who knows who and what Anakin Skywalker has become. This is the one man who knows the entire wretched saga of him, knows of his twin children by his secret wife, a man who knows – or thought he did – the blast furnace that Skywalker called a heart. There is one man whose own heart, despite all his discipline, is smashed to pieces.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is relieved for Tatooine's solitary position. He is relieved that no one has found his lonely hovel deep in the desolate, deserted Jundland Wastes, and profoundly grateful for the silence, even if it does make his thoughts beat an anguished tattoo on his skull. He is not sure he can bear company.

He sits with his hands spread on a rough stone table, staring down at an unappetizing meal of sand-ridden mushrooms and bread. Even the water has sand in it, but Obi-Wan does not care. What he cannot stand is this.

Mere hours ago, he delivered Luke Skywalker, Anakin's infant son, to his aunt and uncle – Anakin's stepbrother Owen Lars and his wife Beru. They are good-hearted, simple farmers, and will provide the boy with a home and a life far away from the murderous crusade of his father and his father's master.

And now – here he is. His new home is this, an abandoned two-room abode, built from sandstreaked clay and sunk half-underground. Here he is to spend his years, growing old, watching the boy, to see if the unworldly strength of Anakin's Force-talent will manifest itself in Luke.

The loss of the Jedi Order stabs and slashes Obi-Wan to pieces. As long as he endures, they are not dead, not yet, but that does not ease the pain. It wakes him from grisly nightmares. It torments him, dogging his steps worse than the wind.

Yoda is exiled on the remote, marshy planet of Dagobah – Obi-Wan has no way of knowing if he arrived safely, if he is alive. He is the last, the very last. And the rest – the pain slaps a small cry from him. Dead, all of them. Whether gunned down by turncoat clones, fallen in battle, or – _oh, too much, too much – _slaughtered personally by his former apprentice, the Jedi have been utterly obliterated.

Obi-Wan has tried a thousand times to will away pain and loss, to allow himself to listen to the Force. But it is dark and tormented, screaming with the memory of unspeakable anguish. He will not find any relief there.

He huddles over the table as the sunset slips into true darkness. His stomach and head ache, and his body shakes uncontrollably. He lifts the bread to his mouth, chewing mechanically. His jaw throbs. He stares out the small window, as the shards of his heart are methodically crushed, once more, in the remembering.

Anakin, Anakin. First an inquisitive, bright, shrewd young boy, tousle-haired and blue-eyed, so proud to wear the Padawan braid as he stood beside his new Master. So eager to learn, so desperate to learn, to soak up anything and everything, whether it was the details of Corellian shipyards or the forms of lightsaber combat. Defiant, yes, but that was to be expected, at his age.

Anakin, growing older, so proud, so frantic to show him what he had learned, dying to please. He defied Obi-Wan's orders constantly, making hash of any regulation that cared to challenge him. He prevailed through stunning skill, sheer audacity, and a combination of brashness, intuition, and lucky guesswork.

Anakin, nineteen, meeting again the woman he had decided to marry when he was nine. Obi-Wan's efforts to uproot this weed of attachment went for nothing. Anakin came to "rescue" him in the Geonosian arena, and then – there was the first glimpse of the horror he was to become, as he charged Count Dooku in pride and fury and paid dearly for it. This was when the black, uncontrollable rage first manifested. The first that Obi-Wan knew of it, at any rate.

The day Anakin had become a Jedi Knight was the proudest of Obi-Wan's life. Exhausted, beaten and bloody from the trials, his lightsaber still clenched in his mechanical hand, Anakin had stood straight, a stunning smile lighting his face. Those were the days when the hero in him was plainly obvious, and nothing of the villain.

Anakin, his gaze as blue and unsettling as ever, had looked straight into Obi-Wan's eyes as the older Jedi gently cut his Padawan braid, laid the soft sliver of hair in his hand. "Anakin, I am very proud of you," Obi-Wan had whispered in his ear, and Anakin turned that dazzling, dazing smile on his new partner, no longer Master.

And partners they had been, two halves of the same warrior, mind, being, spirit. Obi-Wan could not imagine life without Anakin there to complement him.

_And for all he loved me, he lied to me just as well. _Anakin had never seen fit to inform Obi-Wan of the true nature of his relationships with Padmé Amidala and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine – a mistake that had cost them both the Jedi and the Republic. Anakin had offered half-truths and vague excuses, never honesty.

Obi-Wan was what some called the archetypal Jedi. He was an astounding lightsaber combatant who preferred to talk things out. He was an almost-unmatched starfighter pilot who hated to fly. His sense of fairness and justice was renowned even by the Masters, who had recognized him for his accomplishments by offering him a seat on the Jedi Council. And Obi-Wan had never manipulated, shadowed, or twisted the truth, or the Force, even a fraction as much as Anakin had. _Before _his fall.

He had never desired a different life. He had never imagined one. The Jedi were his family, the Force – almost – his only love. Anakin had never been that way, and in the end, the cracks in this brilliant, fatally flawed Jedi had destroyed him. But not before he took the rest of the Order with him.

* * *

Obi-Wan hunches over, drawing short, sharp breaths. It is too cruel. It has to be a dream. Mace, Saesee, Agen – even, so long ago, his own Master Qui-Gon – all victims of the Sith. A thousand times, he has been told that love, peace, justice will win out over anger, fear, hatred. And each time the Jedi have been wrong has been written in their own blood.

_Anakin. Anakin. Oh, Anakin, how could you do this? _Obi-Wan pushes the plate away. _You were the Chosen One. When the moment came, if you had been strong enough to kill Palpatine...how much pain could you have spared us? But you were seduced by the lies and false promises, and now... _Obi-Wan can't bear to keep thinking, can't see a way to stop. _Oh, my Anakin. My son, my Padawan, my friend, my brother, my other half... Why? Why?_

Obi-Wan stares into the dusk, trying to control his breathing, refusing to let his cracked veneer shatter completely. But it is too late. It is too late for everything.

After a long pause, he stands up and pads softly down the steps in the back, down a grainy tunnel and out into the plateau behind the hovel. A triad of sandstone fists shield it from the worst of the sand and wind, and the sunset is just deepening to true night. The thin, trembling moon perches on the horizon.

Here, there is a hot pool, smelling of sulfur, deep enough that his toes barely scrape the bottom. He wonders how hot it has to be to burn away thoughts, instill silence and calm. He wonders if it will ever be.

In silence, Obi-Wan sheds his robes and slips in. He lies there, raw and hurting, open to the sky, the universe, the world, watching the stars wheel overhead with eyes that ache from holding back tears. He cannot, will not, cry. He has to obey the path, keep true to the Jedi even when he _is _the Jedi.

_The one time I dared disobey was the time I should have listened. The one time I tried to turn against it... no matter the pain, I should have let Anakin go._

It is no use imagining what should have and might have and could have been. A Jedi does not dwell on the past. A Jedi detaches himself from emotion, from attachment and envy and the pure anguish that always comes with it.

Obi-Wan briefly wonders why his face is wet when he has not yet slipped his head beneath the hot, mephitic water. Steam rises off his body, pale and ghostly, and when he lets himself, finally, slowly relax, it punches a breathless sob out of him.

Obi-Wan is overwhelmed by the cruelty, lost with loneliness, beset with despair and second-guessing. Slumped against the edge, steaming and gasping, he realizes at last that there is no tranquility, and perhaps there never will be, for a horror as great as the murder of the entire Order.

He bends over, staring at his moonlit reflection on the water. He scarcely knows this old, exhausted man, with deep streaks of silver in his auburn beard and hair. A second sob forces its way out of his mouth. He tastes salt and sulfur, tears and betrayal. His eyes sting, his shoulders heave.

If anybody hears the great Obi-Wan Kenobi crying his heart out, they will think it is only the wind, scraping through empty stone beneath the endless sky, here in a world of sand, sorrow, and shattered dreams. They will not see the man, drifting and drowning, choking on the hot water, circling slowly, circling until he goes under.

* * *

Far away, in another plain homestead, a baby cries.

Beru Lars shrugs into a robe and scurries through the quiet, whitewashed corridors to the small room now serving as Luke Skywalker's nursery. The newborn is bawling piteously, so she scoops him into her arms, cooing.

Luke snuffles, then lays his head trustingly on her shoulder. Beru kisses his soft, ashy-blonde hair, rocking him. He calms as she walks him back and forth across the room.

Beru knows only that he is a waif, parents indisposed or dead, a little boy who needs a good home, and she is as close to a mother as he will ever have. She does not know of his promise, his peril, and the fact that the hopes of the Jedi Order now rest with this one small boy, sucking his thumb, his cries slowly abating.

Beru stands there until Luke has gone to sleep again. From down the hall, her husband Owen calls out sleepily, so she kisses the baby's forehead, lays him down, and walks back. She crawls beneath the covers with Owen, and lets the knowledge that she is loved and wanted warm her in the chill darkness of Tatooine midnight.

* * *

Far, far, far away, across stars and systems, on a blue-green planet of snowy mountains and glimmering seas, a baby girl cries in a plush nursery. A bevy of adoring nurses rush to her, make her smile, carry her around, offer her toys and bottles and kisses until she is quiet. She has dark eyes, a soft fuzz of dark hair, fair skin, and her name is Leia Organa, the _Skywalker _dropped from it for her own safety.

Her father, a man who harbors his own sorrows but loves his new daughter intensely, appears in the nursery doorway, and the nurses hand Leia to him. Her whimpers turn to contented gurgles, and she nuzzles against him. Bail Organa, cuddling her to his chest, sits on the windowsill as, outside, the Alderaanian sunset bleeds flickering color. And then, as it fades, night falls.


End file.
